Letters  from  America 


Letters  from  America 
by   Rupert   Brooke. 

With  a  Preface  by  Henry  James 


New  York :   Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
597-599  Fifth  Avenue.      1916 


trio  15' 


COPYRIGHT,  1916,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  January,  1916 


Note 

THE  author  started  in  May  1913  on  a  journey  to  the 
United  States,  Canada,  and  the  South  Seas,  from 
which  he  returned  next  year  at  the  beginning  of 
June.  The  first  thirteen  chapters  of  this  book  were 
written  as  letters  to  the  Westminster  Gazette.  He 
would  probably  not  have  republished  them  in  their 
present  form,  as  he  intended  to  write  a  longer  book 
on  his  travels;  but  they  are  now  printed  with  only 
the  correction  of  a  few  evident  slips. 

The  two  remaining  chapters  appeared  in  the  New 
Statesman,  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  war. 

Thanks  are  due  to  the  Editors  who  have  allowed 

the  republication  of  the  articles. 

E.  M. 


330304 


Contents 


PAGE 

NOTE  .  .v 

RUPERT  BROOKE:  BY  HENRY  JAMES   .  .  .         ix 

LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

I.  ARRIVAL,          .....          3 
II.  NEW  YORK     .....         13 

III.  NEW  YORK  (continued)  .  .  .25 

IV.  BOSTON  AND  HARVARD  .  .  .37 
V.  MONTREAL  AND  OTTAWA         .             .  .49 

VI.   QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGUENAY  .  .  .61 

VII.   ONTARIO  .  .  .  .  .75 

VHI.  NIAGARA  FALLS  .  .  .  .87 

IX.  To  WINNIPEG  .  .  .  .99 

X.  OUTSIDE  .  .  .  .  .111 

XI.   THE  PRAIRIES  .  .  .  .123 

XII.   THE  INDIANS  .  .  .  .  .135 

XIII.  THE  ROCKIES  .  .  .  .  .147 

XIV.  SOME  NIGGERS  .  .  .  .159 

AN  UNUSUAL  YOUNG  MAN     .  173 


RUPERT  BROOKE 

NOTHING  more  generally  or  more  recurrently  solicits 
us,  in  the  light  of  literature,  I  think,  than  the  interest 
of  our  learning  how  the  poet,  the  true  poet,  and 
above  all  the  particular  one  with  whom  we  may 
for  the  moment  be  concerned,  has  come  into  his 
estate,  asserted  and  preserved  his  identity,  worked 
out  his  question  of  sticking  to  that  and  to  nothing 
else;  and  has  so  been  able  to  reach  us  and  touch 
us  as  a  poet,  in  spite  of  the  accidents  and  dangers 
that  must  have  beset  this  course.  The  chances 
and  changes,  the  personal  history  of  any  absolute 
genius,  draw  us  to  watch  his  adventure  with  curiosity 
and  inquiry,  lead  us  on  to  win  more  of  his  secret 
and  borrow  more  of  his  experience  (I  mean,  needless 
to  say,  when  we  are  at  all  critically  minded);  but 
there  is  something  in  the  clear  safe  arrival  of  the 
poetic  nature,  in  a  given  case,  at  the  point  of  its 
free  and  happy  exercise,  that  provokes,  if  not  the 
cold  impulse  to  challenge  or  cross-question  it,  at 
least  the  need  of  understanding  so  far  as  possible 
how,  in  a  world  in  wrhich  difficulty  and  disaster 
are  frequent,  the  most  wavering  and  flickering  of 
all  fine  flames  has  escaped  extinction.  We  go  back, 
we  help  ourselves  to  hang  about  the  attestation  of 
the  first  spark  of  the  flame,  and  like  to  indulge  in 
a  fond  notation  of  such  facts  as  that  of  the  air  in 

ix 


x          LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

which  it  was  kindled  and  insisted  on  proceeding, 
or  yet  perhaps  failed  to  proceed,  to  a  larger  com 
bustion,  and  the  draughts,  blowing  about  the  world, 
that  were  either,  as  may  have  happened,  to  quicken 
its  native  force  or  perhaps  to  extinguish  it  in  a 
gust  of  undue  violence.  It  is  naturally  when  the 
poet  has  emerged  unmistakably  clear,  or  has  at  a 
happy  moment  of  his  story  seemed  likely  to,  that 
our  attention  and  our  suspense  in  the  matter  are 
most  intimately  engaged;  and  we  are  at  any  rate 
in  general  beset  by  the  impression  and  haunted  by 
the  observed  law,  that  the  growth  and  the  triumph 
of  the  faculty  at  its  finest  have  been  positively  in 
proportion  to  certain  rigours  of  circumstance. 

It  is  doubtless  not  indeed  so  much  that  this  appear 
ance  has  been  inveterate  as  that  the  quality  of 
genius  in  fact  associated  with  it  is  apt  to  strike  us 
as  the  clearest  we  know.  We  think  of  Dante  in 
harassed  exile,  of  Shakespeare  under  sordidly  pro 
fessional  stress,  of  Milton  in  exasperated  exposure 
and  material  darkness;  we  think  of  Burns  and 
Chatterton,  and  Keats  and  Shelley  and  Coleridge, 
we  think  of  Leopardi  and  Musset  and  Emily  Bronte 
and  Walt  Whitman,  as  it  is  open  to  us  surely  to 
think  even  of  Wordsworth,  so  harshly  conditioned 
by  his  spareness  and  bareness  and  bleakness — all 
this  in  reference  to  the  voices  that  have  most  proved 
their  command  of  the  ear  of  time,  and  with  the 
various  examples  added  of  those  claiming,  or  at 
best  enjoying,  but  the  slighter  attention;  and 
their  office  thus  mainly  affects  us  as  that  of  showing 
in  how  jostled,  how  frequently  arrested  and  all  but 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xi 

defeated  a  hand,  the  torch  could  still  be  carried. 
It  is  not  of  course  for  the  countrymen  of  Byron 
and  of  Tennyson  and  Swinburne,  any  more  than 
for  those  of  Victor  Hugo,  to  say  nothing  of  those 
of  Edmond  Rostand,  to  forget  the  occurrence  on 
occasion  of  high  instances  in  which  the  dangers  all 
seemed  denied  and  only  favour  and  facility  recorded; 
but  it  would  take  more  of  these  than  we  can  begin 
to  set  in  a  row  to  purge  us  of  that  prime  determinant, 
after  all,  of  our  affection  for  the  great  poetic  muse, 
the  vision  of  the  rarest  sensibility  and  the  largest 
generosity  we  know  kept  by  her  at  their  pitch,  kept 
fighting  for  their  life  and  insisting  on  their  range 
of  expression,  amid  doubts  and  derisions  and  buffets, 
even  sometimes  amid  stones  of  stumbling  quite 
self-invited,  that  might  at  any  moment  have  made 
the  loss  of  the  precious  clue  really  irremediable. 
Which  moral,  so  pointed,  accounts  assuredly  for 
half  our  interest  in  the  poetic  character — a  sentiment 
more  unlikely  than  not,  I  think,  to  survive  a  sus 
tained  succession  of  Victor  Hugos  and  Rostands, 
or  of  Byrons,  Tennysons  and  Swinburnes.  We 
quite  consciously  miss  in  these  bards,  as  we  find 
ourselves  rather  wondering  even  at  our  failure  to 
miss  it  in  Shelley,  that  such  "  complications "  as 
they  may  have  had  to  reckon  with  were  not  in 
general  of  the  cruelly  troublous  order,  and  that  no 
stretch  of  the  view  either  of  our  own  "theory  of 
art"  or  of  our  vivacity  of  passion  as  making  trouble, 
contributes  perceptibly  the  required  savour  of  the 
pathetic.  We  cling,  critically  or  at  least  experienti- 
ally  speaking,  to  our  superstition,  if  not  absolutely 


xii        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

to  our  approved  measure,  of  this  grace  and  proof; 
and  that  truly,  to  cut  my  argument  short,  is  what 
sets  us  straight  down  before  a  sudden  case  in  which 
the  old  discrimination  quite  drops  to  the  ground — 
in  which  we  neither  on  the  one  hand  miss  anything 
that  the  general  association  could  have  given  it, 
nor  on  the  other  recognise  the  pomp  that  attends 
the  grand  exceptions  I  have  mentioned- 

Rupert  Brooke,  young,  happy,  radiant,  extra 
ordinarily  endowed  and  irresistibly  attaching,  vir 
tually  met  a  soldier's  death,  met  it  in  the  stress  of 
action  and  the  all  but  immediate  presence  of  the 
enemy;  but  he  is  before  us  as  a  new,  a  confounding 
and  superseding  example  altogether,  an  unprece 
dented  image,  formed  to  resist  erosion  by  time  or 
vulgarisation  by  reference,  of  quickened  possibilities, 
finer  ones  than  ever  before,  in  the  stuff  poets  may 
be  noted  as  made  of.  With  twenty  reasons  fixing 
the  interest  and  the  charm  that  will  henceforth 
abide  in  his  name  and  constitute,  as  we  may  say, 
his  legend,  he  submits  all  helplessly  to  one  in  parti 
cular  which  is,  for  appreciation,  the  least  personal 
to  him  or  inseparable  from  him,  and  he  does  this 
because,  while  he  is  still  in  the  highest  degree  of 
the  distinguished  faculty  and  quality,  we  happen 
to  feel  him  even  more  markedly  and  significantly 
"modern."  This  is  why  I  speak  of  the  mixture 
of  his  elements  as  new,  feeling  that  it  governs  his 
example,  put  by  it  in  a  light  which  nothing  else 
could  have  equally  contributed — so  that  Byron  for 
instance,  who  startled  his  contemporaries  by  taking 
for  granted  scarce  one  of  the  articles  that  formed 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xiii 

their  comfortable  faith  and  by  revelling  in  almost 
everything  that  made  them  idiots  if  he  himself  was 
to  figure  as  a  child  of  truth,  looks  to  us,  by  any  such 
measure,  comparatively  plated  over  with  the  im 
penetrable  rococo  of  his  own  day.  I  speak,  I  hasten 
to  add,  not  of  Byron's  volume,  his  flood  and  his 
fortune,  but  of  his  really  having  quarrelled  with  the 
temper  and  the  accent  of  his  age  still  more  where 
they  might  have  helped  him  to  expression  than 
where  he  but  flew  in  their  face.  He  hugged  his 
pomp,  whereas  our  unspeakably  fortunate  young 
poet  of  to-day,  linked  like  him  also,  for  consecration 
of  the  final  romance,  with  the  isles  of  Greece,  took 
for  his  own  the  whole  of  the  poetic  consciousness 
he  was  born  to,  and  moved  about  in  it  as  a  stripped 
young  swimmer  might  have  kept  splashing  through 
blue  water  and  coming  up  at  any  point  that  friend 
liness  and  fancy,  with  every  prejudice  shed,  might 
determine.  Rupert  expressed  us  all,  at  the  highest 
tide  of  our  actuality,  and  was  the  creature  of  a 
freedom  restricted  only  by  that  condition  of  his 
blinding  youth,  which  we  accept  on  the  whole  with 
gratitude  and  relief — given  that  I  qualify  the  con 
dition  as  dazzling  even  to  himself.  How  can  it 
therefore  not  be  interesting  to  see  a  little  what  the 
wondrous  modern  in  him  consisted  of? 


What  it  first  and  foremost  really  comes  to,  I  think, 
is  the  fact  that  at  an  hour  when  the  civilised  peoples 
are  on  exhibition,  quite  finally  and  sharply  on  show, 


xiv       LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

to  each  other  and  to  the  world,  as  they  absolutely 
never  in  all  their  long  history  have  been  before, 
the  English  tradition  (both  of  amenity  and  of  energy, 
I  naturally  mean),  should  have  flowered  at  once  into 
a  specimen  so  beautifully  producible.  Thousands 
of  other  sentiments  are  of  course  all  the  while,  in 
different  connections,  at  hand  for  us;  but  it  is  of 
the  exquisite  civility,  the  social  instincts  of  the  race, 
poetically  expressed,  that  I  speak;  and  it  would 
be  hard  to  overstate  the  felicity  of  his  fellow-country 
men's  being  able  just  now  to  say:  "Yes,  this, 
with  the  imperfection  of  so  many  of  our  arrange 
ments,  with  the  persistence  of  so  many  of  our  mis 
takes,  with  the  waste  of  so  much  of  our  effort  and 
the  weight  of  the  many-coloured  mantle  of  time 
that  drags  so  redundantly  about  us,  this  natural 
accommodation  of  the  English  spirit,  this  frequent* 
extraordinary  beauty  of  the  English  aspect,  this 
finest  saturation  of  the  English  intelligence  by  its 
most  immediate  associations,  tasting  as  they  mainly 
do  of  the  long  past,  this  ideal  image  of  English  youth, 
in  a  word,  at  once  radiant  and  reflective,  are  things 
that  appeal  to  us  as  delightfully  exhibitional  beyond 
a  doubt,  yet  as  drawn,  to  the  last  fibre,  from  the 
very  wealth  of  our  own  conscience  and  the  very 
force  of  our  own  history.  We  haven't,  for  such 
an  instance  of  our  genius,  to  reach  out  to  strangs 
places  or  across  other,  and  otherwise  productive, 
tracts;  the  exemplary  instance  himself  has  wel!- 
nigh  as  a  matter  of  course  reached  and  revelled, 
for  that  is  exactly  our  way  in  proportion  as  we  feel 
ourselves  clear.  But  the  kind  of  experience  so 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xv 

entailed,  of  contribution  so  gathered,  is  just  what 
we  wear  easiest  when  we  have  been  least  stinted 
of  it,  and  what  our  English  use  of  makes  perhaps 
our  vividest  reference  to  our  thick-growing  native 
determinants." 

Rupert  Brooke,  at  any  rate,  the  charmed  com 
mentator  may  well  keep  before  him,  simply  did  all 
the  usual  English  things — under  the  happy  provision 
of  course  that  he  found  them  in  his  way  at  their  best; 
and  it  was  exactly  most  delightful  in  him  that  no 
inordinate  expenditure,  no  anxious  extension  of 
the  common  plan,  as  "liberally"  applied  all  about 
him,  had  been  incurred  or  contrived  to  predetermine 
his  distinction.  It  is  difficult  to  express  on  the 
contrary  how  peculiar  a  value  attached  to  his  having 
simply  "come  in"  for  the  general  luck  awaiting 
any  English  youth  who  may  not  be  markedly  inapt 
for  the  traditional  chances.  He  could  in  fact  easily 
strike  those  who  most  appreciated  him  as  giving 
such  an  account  of  the  usual  English  things — to 
repeat  the  form  of  my  allusion  to  them — as  seemed 
to  address  you  to  them,  in  their  very  considerable 
number  indeed,  for  any  information  about  him  that 
might  matter,  but  which  left  you  wholly  to  judge 
whether  they  seemed  justified  by  their  fruits.  This 
manner  about  them,  as  one  may  call  it  in  general, 
often  contributes  to  your  impression  that  they  make 
for  a  certain  strain  of  related  modesty  which  may 
on  occasion  be  one  of  their  happiest  effects;  it  at 
any  rate,  in  days  when  my  acquaintance  with  them 
was  slighter,  used  to  leave  me  gaping  at  the  treasure 
of  operation,  the  far  recessional  Derspectives,  it 


xvi       LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

took  for  granted  and  any  offered  demonstration  of 
the  extent  or  the  mysteries  of  which  seemed  unthink 
able  just  in  proportion  as  the  human  resultant 
testified  in  some  one  or  other  of  his  odd  ways  to  their 
influence.  He  might  not  always  be,  at  any  rate  on 
first  acquaintance,  a  resultant  explosively  human, 
but  there  was  in  any  case  one  reflection  he  could 
always  cause  you  to  make:  "What  a  wondrous 
system  it  indeed  must  be  which  insists  on  flourishing 
to  all  appearance  under  such  an  absence  of  advertised 
or  even  of  confessed  relation  to  it  as  would  do 
honour  to  a  vacuum  produced  by  an  air-pump!" 
The  formulation,  the  approximate  expression  of 
what  the  system  at  large  might  or  mightn't  do  for 
those  in  contact  with  it,  became  thus  one's  own 
fitful  care,  with  one's  attention  for  a  considerable 
period  doubtless  dormant  enough,  but  with  the 
questions  always  liable  to  revive  before  the  indivi 
dual  case. 

Rupert  Brooke  made  them  revive  as  soon  as  one 
began  to  know  him,  or  in  other  words  made  one  want 
to  read  back  into  him  each  of  his  promoting  causes 
without  exception,  to  trace  to  some  source  in  the 
ambient  air  almost  any  one,  at  a  venture,  of  his 
aspects;  so  precious  a  loose  and  careless  bundle  of 
happy  references  did  that  inveterate  trick  of  giving 
the  go-by  to  over-emphasis  which  he  shared  with 
his  general  kind  fail  to  prevent  your  feeling  sure  of 
his  having  about  him.  I  think  the  liveliest  interest 
of  these  was  that  while  not  one  of  them  was  signally 
romantic,  by  the  common  measure  of  the  great 
English  amenity,  they  yet  hung  together,  rein- 


RUPERT  BROOKE 

forcing  and  enhancing  each  other,  in  a  way  that 
seemed  to  join  their  hands  for  an  incomparably 
educative  or  civilising  process,  the  great  mark  of 
which  was  that  it  took  some  want  of  amenability 
in  particular  subjects  to  betray  anything  like  a  gap. 
I  do  not  mean  of  course  to  say  that  gaps,  and  occasion 
ally  of  the  most  flagrant,  were  made  so  supremely 
difficult  of  occurrence;  but  only  that  the  effect, 
in  the  human  resultants  who  kept  these,  and  with 
the  least  effort,  most  in  abeyance,  was  a  thing  one 
wouldn't  have  had  different  by  a  single  shade.  I 
am  not  sure  that  such  a  case  of  the  recognisable 
was  the  better  established  by  the  fact  of  Rupert's 
being"  one  of  the  three  sons  of  a  house-master  at 
Rugby,  where  he  was  bqrn^in  1887  and  where  he 
lost"  his  father  in  1910,  the"  jldefjjpf  his  brothers 
having~'tKen  already  died  and  the  younger  being 
destined"  to  "fall  in  battle  atTtEe  allied  Front,  shortly 
after  he  himself  Tuuf  succumbed;  but  the  circum- 
stance  1  speafc'of  gives  aT  peculiar  and  an  especially 
welcome  consecration  to  that  perceptible  play  in 
him  of  the  inbred  "public  school"  character  the 
bloom  of  which  his  short  life  had  too  little  time  to 
remove  and  which  one  wouldn't  for  the  world  not 
have  been  disposed  to  note,  with  everything  else, 
in  the  beautiful  complexity  of  his  attributes.  The 
fact  was  that  if  one  liked  him — and  I  may  as  well 
say  at  once  that  few  young  men,  in  our  time,  can 
have  gone  through  life  under  a  greater  burden, 
more  easily  carried  and  kept  in  its  place,  of  being 
liked — one  liked  absolutely  everything  about  him, 
without  the  smallest  exception;  so  that  he  appeared 


xviii     LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

to  convert  before  one's  eyes  all  that  happened  to 
him,  or  that  had  or  that  ever  might,  not  only  to  his 
advantage  as  a  source  of  life  and  experience,  but  to 
the  enjoyment  on  its  own  side  of  a  sort  of  illustrational 
virtue  or  glory.  This  appearance  of  universal 
assimilation — often  indeed  by  incalculable  ironic 
reactions  which  were  of  the  very  essence  of  the  restless 
young  intelligence  rejoicing  in  its  gaiety — made 
each  part  of  his  rich  consciousness,  so  rapidly  ac 
quired,  cling,  as  it  were,  to  the  company  of  all  the 
other  parts,  so  as  at  once  neither  to  miss  any  touch 
of  the  luck  (one  keeps  coming  back  to  that),  incurred 
by  them,  or  to  let  them  suffer  any  want  of  its  own 
lightness.  It  was  as  right,  through  the  spell  he 
cast  altogether,  that  he  should  have  come  into  the 
world  and  have  passed  his  boyhood  in  that  Rugby 
home,  as  that  he  should  have  been  able  later  on  to 
wander  as  irrepressibly  as  the  spirit  moved  him, 
or  as  that  he  should  have  found  himself  fitting  as 
intimately  as  he  was  very  soon  to  do  into  any  number 
of  the  incalculabilities,  the  intellectual  at  least,  of 
the  poetic  temperament.  He  had  them  all,  he  gave 
himself  in  his  short  career  up  to  them  all — and  I 
confess  that,  partly  for  reasons  to  be  further  devel 
oped,  I  am  unable  even  to  guess  what  they  might 
eventually  have  made  of  him;  which  is  of  course 
what  brings  us  round  again  to  that  view  of  him  as 
the  young  poet  with  absolutely  nothing  but  his 
generic  spontaneity  to  trouble  about,  the  young 
poet  profiting  for  happiness  by  a  general  condition 
unprecedented  for  young  poets,  that  I  began  by 
indulging  in. 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xix 

He  went  from  Rugby  to  Cambridge,^ where,  after- 
a  wTnTeTTi^carriedjoff 'a  Fellowship  at  King's,  and 
where,  during  aTshort  visit  there  in  "May  week," 
or  otherwise  early  in  June  1909,  I  first,  and  as  I  was 
to  find,  very  unforgettingly,  met  him.  He  reappears 
to  me  as  with  his  felicities  all  most  promptly  divinable, 
in  that  splendid  setting  of  the  river  at  the  "backs"; 
as  to  which  indeed  I  remember  vaguely  wondering 
what  it  was  left  to  such  a  place  to  do  with  the  added, 
the  verily  wasted,  grace  of  such  a  person,  or  how 
even  such  a  person  could  hold  his  own,  as  who  should 
say,  at  such  a  pitch  of  simple  scenic  perfection. 
Any  difficulty  dropped,  however,  to  the  reconciling 
vision;  for  that  the  young  man  was  publicly  and 
responsibly  a  poet  seemed  the  fact  a  little  over- 
officiously  involved — to  the  promotion  of  a  certain 
surprise  (on  one's  own  part)  at  his  having  to  "be" 
anything.  It  was  to  come  over  me  still  more  after 
wards  that  nothing  of  that  or  of  any  other  sort  need 
really  have  rested  on  him  with  a  weight  of  obligation, 
and  in  fact  I  cannot  but  think  that  life  might  have 
been  seen  and  felt  to  suggest  to  him,  in  an  exposed 
unanimous  conspiracy,  that  his  status  should  be 
left  to  the  general  sense  of  others,  ever  so  many 
others,  who  would  sufficiently  take  care  of  it,  and 
that  such  a  fine  rare  case  was  accordingly  as  arguable 
as  it  possibly  could  be — with  the  pure,  undischarged 
poetry  of  him  and  the  latent  presumption  of  his 
dying  for  his  country  the  only  things  to  gainsay  it. 
The  question  was  to  a  certain  extent  crude,  "Why 
need  he  be  a  poet,  why  need  he  so  specialise?" 
but  if  this  was  so  it  was  only,  it  was  already,  symp- 


xx        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

tomatic  of  the  interesting  final  truth  that  he  was 
to  testify  to  his  function  in  the  unparalleled  way. 
He  was  going  to  have  the  life  (the  unanimous  con 
spiracy  so  far  achieved  that),  was  going  to  have  it 
under  no  more  formal  guarantee  than  that  of  his 
appetite  and  genius  for  it;  and  this  was  to  help  us 
all  to  the  complete  appreciation  of  him.  No  single 
scrap  of  the  English  fortune  at  its  easiest  and  truest 
— which  means  of  course  with  every  vulgarity  dropped 
out — but  was  to  brush  him  as  by  the  readiest  in 
stinctive  wing,  never  over-straining  a  point  or  achiev 
ing  a  miracle  to  do  so;  only  trusting  his  exquisite 
imagination  and  temper  to  respond  to  the  succession 
of  his  opportunities.  It  is  in  the  light  of  what  this 
succession  could  in  the  most  natural  and  most  familiar 
way  in  the  world  amount  to  for  him  that  we  find 
this  idea  of  a  beautiful  crowning  modernness  above 
all  to  meet  his  case.  The  promptitude,  the  per 
ception,  the  understanding,  the  quality  of  humour 
and  sociability,  the  happy  lapses  in  the  logic  01 
inward  reactions  (save  for  their  all  infallibly  being 
poetic),  of  which  he  availed  himself  consented  to  be 
as  illustrational  as  any  fondest  friend  could  wish, 
whether  the  subject  of  the  exhibition  was  aware  of 
the  degree  or  not,  and  made  his  vivacity  of  vision, 
his  exercise  of  fancy  and  irony,  of  observation  at 
its  freest,  inevitable — while  at  the  same  time  setting 
in  motion  no  machinery  of  experience  in  which  his 
curiosity,  or  in  other  words,  the  quickness  of  his 
familiarity,  didn't  move  faster  than  anything  else. 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxi 

II 

I  owe  to  his  intimate  and  devoted  friend  Mr  Edward 
Marsh  the  communication  of  many  of  his  letters, 
these  already  gathered  into  an  admirable  brief 
memoir  which  is  yet  to  appear  and  which  will  give 
ample  help  in  the  illustrative  way  to  the  pages  to 
which  the  present  remarks  form  a  preface,  and  which 
are  collected  from  the  columns  of  the  London  evening 
journal  in  which  they  originally  saw  the  light.  The 
"literary  baggage"  of  his  short  course  consists  thus 
of  his  two  slender  volumes  of  verse  and  of  these  two 
scarcely  stouter  sheafs  of  correspondence1 — though 
I  should  add  that  the  hitherto  unpublished  letters 
enjoy  the  advantage  of  a  commemorative  and 
interpretative  commentary,  at  the  Editor's  hands, 
which  will  have  rendered  the  highest  service  to  each 
matter.  That  even  these  four  scant  volumes  tell 
the  whole  story,  or  fix  the  whole  image,  of  the  fine 
young  spirit  they  are  concerned  with  we  certainly 
hold  back  from  allowing;  his  case  being  in  an  ex 
traordinary  degree  that  of  a  creature  on  whom  the 
gods  had  smiled  their  brightest  and  half  of  whose 
manifestation  therefore  was  by  the  simple  act  of 
presence  and  of  direct  communication.  He  did 
in  fact  specialise,  to  repeat  my  term;  only  since, 
as  one  reads  him,  whether  in  verse  or  in  prose,  that 
distinguished  readability  seems  all  the  specialisation 
one  need  invoke,  so  when  the  question  was  of  the 
gift  that  made  of  his  face  to  face  address  a  circum 
stance  so  complete  in  itself  as  apparently  to  cover  all 
the  ground,  leaving  no  margin  either,  an  activity 

1  There  remain  also  to  be  published  a]  book  on  John  Webster  and  a 
prose  play  in  one  act. — E.  M. 


xxii      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

to  the  last  degree  justified  appeared  the  only  name 
for  one's  impression.  The  moral  of  all  which  is 
doubtless  that  these  brief,  if  at  the  same  time  very 
numerous,  moments  of  his  quick  career  formed 
altogether  as  happy  a  time,  in  as  happy  a  place,  to 
be  born  to  as  the  student  of  the  human  drama  has 
ever  caught  sight  of — granting  always,  that  is,  that 
some  actor  of  the  scene  has  been  thoroughly  up  to 
his  part.  Such  was  the  sort  of  recognition,  assuredly, 
under  which  Rupert  played  his — that  of  his  lending 
himself  to  every  current  and  contact,  the  "newer," 
the  later  fruit  of  time,  the  better;  only  this  not 
because  any  particular  one  was  an  agitating  re 
velation,  but  because  with  due  sensibility,  with  a 
restless  inward  ferment,  at  the  centre  of  them  all, 
what  could  he  possibly  so  much  feel  like  as  the  heir 
of  all  the  ages?  I  remember  his  originally  giving 
me,  though  with  no  shade  of  imputable  intention, 
the  sense  of  his  just  being  that,  with  the  highest 
amiability — the  note  in  him  that,  as  I  have  hinted, 
one  kept  coming  back  to;  so  that  during  a  long  wait 
for  another  glimpse  of  him  I  thought  of  the  prac 
tice  and  function  so  displayed  as  wholly  engaging, 
took  for  granted  his  keeping  them  up  with  equal 
facility  and  pleasure.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
delightful  accordingly,  later  on,  in  renewal  of  the 
personal  acquaintance  than  to  gather  that  this  was 
exactly  what  had  been  taking  place,  and  with  an 
inveteracy  as  to  which  his  letters  are  a  full  docu 
mentation.  Whatever  his  own  terms  for  the  process 
might  be  had  he  been  brought  to  book,  and  though 
the  variety  of  his  terms  for  anything  and  everything 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxiii 

was  the  very  play,  and  even  the  measure,  of  his 
talent,  the  most  charmed  and  conclusive  description 
of  him  was  that  no  young  man  had  ever  so  naturally 
taken  on  under  the  pressure  of  life  the  poetic  nature, 
and  shaken  it  so  free  of  every  encumbrance  by  simply 
wearing  it  as  he  wore  his  complexion  or  his  outline. 

That,  then,  was  the  way  the  imagination  followed 
him  with  its  luxury  of  confidence:  he  was  doing 
everything  that  could  be  done  in  the  time  (since 
this  was  the  modernest  note),  but  performing  each 
and  every  finest  shade  of  these  blest  acts  with  a 
poetic  punctuality  that  was  only  matched  by  a 
corresponding  social  sincerity.  I  recall  perfectly 
my  being  sure  of  it  all  the  while,  even  if  with  little 
current  confirmation  beyond  that  supplied  by  his 
first  volume  of  verse;  and  the  effect  of  the  whole 
record  is  now  to  show  that  such  a  conclusion  was 
quite  extravagantly  right.  He  was  constantly  doing 
all  the  things,  and  this  with  a  reckless  freedom,  as 
it  might  be  called,  that  really  dissociated  the  respon 
sibility  of  the  precious  character  from  anything  like 
conscious  domestic  coddlement  to  a  point  at  which 
no  troubled  young  singer,  none,  that  is,  equally 
troubled,  had  perhaps  ever  felt  he  could  afford  to 
dissociate  it.  Rupert's  resources  for  affording,  in 
the  whole  connection,  were  his  humour,  his  irony, 
his  need,  under  every  quiver  of  inspiration,  toward 
whatever  end,  to  be  amused  and  amusing,  and  to 
find  above  all  that  this  could  never  so  much  occur 
as  by  the  application  of  his  talent,  of  which  he  was 
perfectly  conscious,  to  his  own  case.  He  carried 
his  case  with  him,  for  purposes  of  derision  as  much 


xriv     LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

as  for  any  others,  wherever  he  went,  and  how  he 
went  everywhere,  thus  blissfully  burdened,  is  what 
meets  us  at  every  turn  on  his  printed  page.  My 
only  doubt  about  him  springs  in  fact  from  the 
question  of  whether  he  knew  that  the  earthly  felicity 
enjoyed  by  him,  his  possession  of  the  exquisite 
temperament  linked  so  easily  to  the  irrepressible 
experience,  was  a  thing  to  make  of  the  young  Briton 
of  the  then  hour  so  nearly  the  spoiled  child  of  history 
that  one  wanted  something  in  the  way  of  an  extra 
guarantee  to  feel  soundly  sure  of  him.  I  come  back 
once  more  to  his  having  apparently  never  dreamt 
of  any  stretch  of  the  point  of  liberal  allowance,  of 
so-called  adventure,  on  behalf  of  "development," 
never  dreamt  of  any  stretch  but  that  of  the  imagin 
ation  itself  indeed — quite  a  different  matter  and  even 
if  it  too  were  at  moments  to  recoil;  it  was  so  true 
that  the  general  measure  of  his  world  as  to  what  it 
might  be  prompt  and  pleasant  and  in  the  day's 
work  or  the  day's  play  to  "go  in  for"  was  exactly 
the  range  that  tinged  all  his  education  as  liberal,  the 
education  the  free  design  of  which  he  had  left  so 
short  a  way  behind  him  when  he  died. 

Just  there  was  the  luck  attendant  of  the  coincidence 
of  his  course  with  the  moment  at  which  the  pro 
ceeding  hither  and  yon  to  the  tune  of  almost  any 
"happy  thought,"  and  in  the  interest  of  almost 
any  branch  of  culture  or  invocation  of  response  that 
might  be  more  easily  improvised  than  not,  could 
positively  strike  the  observer  as  excessive,  as  in 
fact  absurd,  for  the  formation  of  taste  or  the  enrich 
ment  of  genius,  unless  the  principle  of  these  values 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxv 

had  in  a  particular  connection  been  subjected  in 
advance  to  some  challenge  or  some  test.  Why 
should  it  take  such  a  flood  of  suggestion,  such  a 
luxury  of  acquaintance  and  contact,  only  to  make 
superficial  specimens?  Why  shouldn't  the  art  of 
living  inward  a  little  more,  and  thereby  of  digging 
a  little  deeper  or  pressing  a  little  further,  rather 
modestly  replace  the  enviable,  always  the  enviable, 
young  Briton's  enormous  range  of  alternatives  in 
the  way  of  question-begging  movement,  the  way 
of  vision  and  of  non-vision,  the  enormous  habit 
of  holidays?  If  one  could  have  made  out  once  for 
all  that  holidays  were  proportionately  and  infallibly 
inspiring  one  would  have  ceased  thoughtfully  to 
worry;  but  the  question  was  as  it  stood  an  old 
story,  even  though  it  might  freshly  radiate,  on 
occasion,  under  the  recognition  that  the  seed- 
smothered  patch  of  soil  flowered,  when  it  did  flower, 
with  a  fragrance  all  its  own.  This  concomitant, 
however,  always  dangled,  that  if  it  were  put  to  us, 
"Do  you  really  mean  you  would  rather  they  should 
not  perpetually  have  been  again  for  a  look-in  at 
Berlin,  or  an  awfully  good  time  at  Munich,  or  a 
rush  round  Sicily,  or  a  dash  through  the  States  to 
Japan,  with  whatever  like  rattling  renewals?" 
you  would  after  all  shrink  from  the  responsibility 
of  such  a  restriction  before  being  clear  as  to  what 
you  would  suggest  in  its  place.  Rupert  went  on 
reading-parties  from  King's  to  Lulworth  for  instance, 
which  the  association  of  the  two  places,  the  two 
so  extraordinarily  finished  scenes,  causes  to  figure 
as  a  sort  of  preliminary  flourish;  and  everything 


xxvi     LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

that  came  his  way  after  that  affects  me  as  the  blest 
indulgence  in  flourish  upon  flourish.  This  was  not 
in  the  least  the  air,  or  the  desire,  or  the  pretension 
of  it,  but  the  unfailing  felicity  just  kept  catching 
him  up,  just  left  him  never  wanting  nor  waiting 
for  some  pretext  to  roam,  or  indeed  only  the  more 
responsively  to  stay,  doing  either,  whichever  it  might 
be,  as  a  form  of  highly  intellectualised  "fun."  He 
didn't  overflow  with  shillings,  yet  so  far  as  roving 
was  concerned  the  practice  was  always  easy,  and 
perhaps  the  adorably  whimsical  lyric,  contained 
in  his  second  volume  of  verse,  on  the  pull  of  Grant- 
chester  at  his  heartstrings,  as  the  old  vicarage  of  that 
sweet  adjunct  to  Cambridge  could  present  itself  to 
him  in  a  Berlin  cafe,  may  best  exemplify  the  sort  of 
thing  that  was  represented,  in  one  way  and  another, 
by  his  taking  his  most  ultimately  English  ease. 

Whatever  Berlin  or  Munich,  to  speak  of  them  only, 
could  do  or  fail  to  do  for  him,  how  can  one  not  rejoice 
without  reserve  in  the  way  he  felt  what  he  did  feel 
as  poetic  reaction  of  the  liveliest  and  finest,  with 
the  added  interest  of  its  often  turning  at  one  and  the 
same  time  to  the  fullest  sincerity  and  to  a  perversity 
of  the  most  "evolved"? — since  I  can  not  dispense 
with  that  sign  of  truth.  Never  was  a  young  singer! 
either  less  obviously  sentimental  or  less  addicted' 
to  the  mere  twang  of  the  guitar;  at  the  same  time 
that  it  was  always  his  personal  experience  or  his 
curious,  his  not  a  little  defiantly  excogitated,  inner 
vision  that  he  sought  to  catch;  some  of  the  odd 
fashion  of  his  play  with  which  latter  seems  onj 
occasion  to  preponderate  over  the  truly  pleasing 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxvii 

poet's  appeal  to  beauty  or  cultivated  habit  of  grace. 
Odd  enough,  no  doubt,  that  Rupert  should  appear 
to  have  had  well-nigh  in  horror  the  cultivation  of 
grace  for  its  own  sake,  as  we  say,  and  yet  should 
really  not  have  disfigured  his  poetic  countenance 
by  a  single  touch  quotable  as  showing  this.  The 
medal  of  the  mere  pleasant  had  always  a  reverse 
for  him,  and  it  was  generally  in  that  substitute  he 
was  most  interested.  We  catch  in  him  reaction 
upon  reaction,  the  succession  of  these  conducing  to 
his  entirely  unashamed  poetic  complexity,  and  of 
course  one  observation  always  to  be  made  about 
him,  one  reminder  always  to  be  gratefully  welcomed, 
is  that  we  are  dealing  after  all  with  one  of  the 
youngest  quantities  of  art  and  character  taken 
together  that  ever  arrived  at  an  irresistible  appeal.  ^ 
His  irony,  his  liberty,  his  pleasantry,  his  paradox,  j 
and  what  I  have  called  his  perversity,  are  all  nothing 
if  not  young;  and  I  may  as  well  say  at  once  for  him  , 
that  I  find  in  the  imagination  of  their  turning  in 
time,  dreadful  time,  to  something  more  balanced 
and  harmonised,  a  difficulty  insuperable.  The  self- 
consciousness,  the  poetic,  of  his  so  free  figuration 
(in  verse,  only  in  verse,  oddly  enough)  of  the  un 
pleasant  to  behold,  to  touch,  or  even  to  smell,  was 
certainly,  I  think,  nothing  if  not  "self-conscious," 
but  there  were  so  many  things  in  his  consciousness, 
which  was  never  in  the  least  unpeopled,  that  it  would 
have  been  a  rare  chance  had  his  projection  of  the 
self  that  we  are  so  apt  to  make  an  object  of  invidious 
allusion  stayed  out.  What  it  all  really  most  comes 
to,  you  feel  again,  is  that  none  of  his  impulses  pros- 


xxviii    LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

pered  in  solitude,  or,  for  that  matter,  were  so  much  as 
permitted  to  mumble  their  least  scrap  there;  he  was 
predestined  and  condemned  to  sociability,  which 
no  league  of  neglect  could  have  deprived  him  of 
even  had  it  speculatively  tried:  whereby  what  was 
it  but  his  own  image  that  he  most  saw  reflected  in 
other  faces?  It  would  still  have  been  there,  it 
couldn't  possibly  have  succeeded  in  not  being,  even 
had  he  closed  his  eyes  to  it  with  elaborate  tightness. 
The  only  neglect  must  have  been  on  his  own  side, 
where  indeed  it  did  take  form  in  that  of  as  signal 
an  opportunity  to  become  "spoiled,"  probably, 
as  ever  fell  in  a  brilliant  young  man's  way:  so  that 
to  help  out  my  comprehension  of  the  unsightly  and 
unsavoury,  sufficiently  wondered  at,  with  which  his 
muse  repeatedly  embraced  the  occasion  to  associ 
ate  herself,  I  take  the  thing  for  a  declaration  of 
the  idea  that  he  might  himself  prevent  the  spoiling 
so  far  as  possible.  He  could  in  fact  prevent  nothing, 
the  wave  of  his  fortune  and  his  favour  continuing 
so  to  carry  him;  which  is  doubtless  one  of  the 
reasons  why,  through  our  general  sense  that  nothing 
could  possibly  not  be  of  the  last  degree  of  Tightness 
in  him,  what  would  have  been  wrong  in  others, 
literally  in  any  creature  but  him,  like  for  example 
"A  Channel  Passage"  of  his  first  volume,  simply 
puts  on,  while  this  particular  muse  stands  anxiously 
by,  a  kind  of  dignity  of  experiment  quite  consistent 
with  our  congratulating  her,  at  the  same  time,  as 
soon  as  it  is  over.  What  was  "A  Channel  Passage" 
thus  but  a  flourish  marked  with  the  sign  of  all  his 
flourishes,  that  of  being  a  success  and  having  fruition  ? 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxix 

Though  it  performed  the  extraordinary  feat  of 
directing  the  contents  of  the  poet's  stomach  straight 
at  the  object  of  his  displeasure,  we  feel  that,  by 
some  excellent  grace,  the  object  is  not  at  all  reached 
— too  many  things,  and  most  of  all,  too  innocently 
enormous  a  cynicism,  standing  in  the  way  and  them 
selves  receiving  the  tribute;  having  in  a  word, 
impatient  young  cynicism  as  they  are,  that  experience 
as  well  as  various  things. 


Ill 


No  detail  of  Mr  Marsh's  admirable  memoir  may 
I  allow  myself  to  anticipate.  I  can  only  announce 
it  as  a  picture,  with  all  the  elements  in  iridescent 
fusion,  of  the  felicity  that  fairly  dogged  Rupert's 
steps,  as  we  may  say,  and  that  never  allowed  him 
to  fall  below  its  measure.  We  shall  read  into  it 
even  more  relations  than  nominally  appear,  and 
every  one  of  them  again  a  flourish,  every  one  of  them 
a  connection  with  his  time,  a  "sampling"  of  it  at  its 
most  multitudinous  and  most  characteristic;  every 
one  of  them  too  a  record  of  the  state  of  some  other 
charmed,  not  less  than  charming  party — even  when 
the  letter-writer's  expression  of  the  interest,  the 
amusement,  the  play  of  fancy,  of  taste,  of  whatever 
sort  of  appreciation  or  reaction  for  his  own  spirit, 
is  the  ostensible  note.  This  is  what  I  mean  in 
especial  by  the  constancy  with  which,  and  the  cost 
at  which,  perhaps  not  less,  for  others,  the  poetic 
sensibility  was  maintained  and  guaranteed.  It  was 


xxx      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

as  genuine  as  if  he  had  been  a  bard  perched  on  an 
eminence  with  a  harp,  and  yet  it  was  arranged 
for,  as  we  may  say,  by  the  close  consensus  of  those 
who  had  absolutely  to  know  their  relation  with  him 
but  as  a  delight  and  who  wanted  therefore  to  keep 
him,  to  the  last  point,  true  to  himself.  His  complete 
curiosity  and  sociability  might  have  made  him,  on 
these  lines,  factitious,  if  it  had  not  happened  that 
the  people  he  so  variously  knew  and  the  contacts 
he  enjoyed  were  just  of  the  kind  to  promote  most 
his  facility  and  vivacity  and  intelligence  of  life. 
They  were  all  young  together,  allowing  for  three 
or  four  notable,  by  which  I  mean  far  from  the  least 
responsive,  exceptions;  they  were  all  fresh  and  free 
and  acute  and  aware  and  in  "the  world,"  when  not 
out  of  it;  all  together  at  the  high  speculative,  the 
high  talkative  pitch  of  the  initiational  stage  of  these 
latest  years,  the  informed  and  animated,  the  so 
consciously  non-benighted,  geniality  of  which  was 
to  make  him  the  clearest  and  most  projected  poetic 
case,  with  the  question  of  difficulty  and  doubt  and 
frustration  most  solved,  the  question  of  the  immediate 
and  its  implications  most  in  order  for  him,  that  it 
was  possible  to  conceive.  He  had  found  at  once 
to  his  purpose  a  wondrous  enough  old  England,  an 
England  breaking  out  into  numberless  assertions 
of  a  new  awareness,  into  liberties  of  high  and  clean, 
even  when  most  sceptical  and  discursive,  young 
intercourse ;  a  carnival  of  half  anxious  and  half 
elated  criticism,  all  framed  and  backgrounded  in 
still  richer  accumulations,  both  moral  and  material, 
or,  as  who  should  say,  pictorial,  of  the  matter  of 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxxi 

course  and  the  taken  for  granted.  Nothing  could 
have  been  in  greater  contrast,  one  cannot  too  much 
insist,  to  the  situation  of  the  traditional  lonely 
lyrist  who  yearns  for  connections  and  relations  yet 
to  be  made  and  whose  difficulty,  lyrical,  emotional, 
personal,  social  or  intellectual,  has  thereby  so  little 
in  "•  common  with  any  embarrassment  of  choice. 
The  author  of  the  pages  before  us  was  perhaps  the 
young  lyrist,  in  all  the  annals  of  verse,  who,  having 
the  largest  luxury  of  choice,  yet  remained  least 
"demoralised"  by  it  —  how  little  demoralised  he 
was  to  round  off  his  short  history  by  showing. 

It  was  into  these  conditions,  thickening  and 
thickening,  in  their  comparative  serenity,  up  to 
the  eleventh  hour,  that  the  War  came  smashing 
down;  but  of  the  basis,  the  great  garden  ground, 
all  green  and  russet  and  silver,  all  a  tissue  of  dis 
tinguished  and  yet  so  easy  occasions,  so  improvised 
extensions,  which  they  had  already  placed  at  his 
service  and  that  of  his  extraordinarily  amiable  and 
constantly  enlarged  "set"  for  the  exercise  of  their 
dealing  with  the  rest  of  the  happy  earth  in  punctuat 
ing  interludes,  it  is  the  office  of  our  few  but  precious 
documents  to  enable  us  to  judge.  Tjie  in|.er]uje  __ 
that  here  concerns  us  most  is  that  of_th.e_jeajupent 
in~Tus^journey  round  a  considerable  part  .  of^Jtjie 
"  testifying  with  a  charm  that 
that  quest  of  unprejudiced 


culture,  the  true  poetic,  the  vision  of  the  life  of 
man,  which  was  to  prove  the  liveliest  of  his  impulses. 
It  was  not  indeed  under  the  flag  of  that  research  that 
he  offered  himself  for  the  Army  almost  immediately 


xxxii    LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

after  his  return  to  England — and  even  if  when  a 
young  man  was  so  essentially  a  poet  we  need  see  no 
act  in  him  as  a  prosaic  alternative.  The  misfortune 
of  this  set  of  letters  from  New  York  and  Boston, 
from  Canada  and  Samoa,  addressed,  for  the  most 
part,  to  a  friendly  London  evening  journal  is,  alas, 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  of  so  moderate  a  quantity; 
for  we  make  him  out  as  steadily  more  vivid  and  de 
lightful  while  his  opportunity  grows.  He  is  touch 
ing  at  first,  inevitably  quite  juvenile,  in  the  measure 
of  his  good  faith;  we  feel  him  not  a  little  lost  and 
lonely  and  stranded  in  the  New  York  pandemonium 
— obliged  to  throw  himself  upon  sky-scrapers  and 
the  overspread  blackness  pricked  out  in  a  flickering 
fury  of  imaged  advertisement  for  want  of  some  more 
interesting  view  of  character  and  manners.  We 
long  to  take  him  by  the  hand  and  show  him  finer 
lights — eyes  of  but  meaner  range,  after  all,  being 
adequate  to  the  gape  at  the  vertical  business  blocks 
and  the  lurid  sky-clamour  for  more  dollars.  We 
feel  in  a  manner  his  sensibility  wasted  and  would 
fain  turn  it  on  to  the  capture  of  deeper  meanings. 
But  we  must  leave  him  to  himself  and  to  youth's 
facility  of  wonder;  he  is  amused,  beguiled,  struck 
on  the  whole  with  as  many  differences  as  we  could 
expect,  and  sufficiently  reminded,  no  doubt,  of  the 
number  of  words  he  is  restricted  to.  It  is  moreover 
his  sign,  as  it  is  that  of  the  poetic  turn  of  mind  in 
general  that  we  seem  to  catch  him  alike  in  antici 
pations  or  divinations,  and  in  lapses  and  freshnesses, 
of  experience  that  surprise  us.  He  makes  various 
reflections,  some  of  them  all  perceptive  and  ingenious 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxxiii 

— as  about  the  faces,  the  men's  in  particular,  seen 
in  the  streets,  the  public  conveyances  and  elsewhere; 
though  falling  a  little  short,  in  his  friendly  wondering 
way,  of  that  bewildered  apprehension  of  monotony 
of  type,  of  modelling  lost  in  the  desert,  which  we 
might  have  expected  of  him,  and  of  the  question 
above  all  of  what  is  destined  to  become  of  that 
more  and  more  vanishing  quantity  the  American 
nose  other  than  Judaic. 

What  we  note  in  particular  is  that  he  likes,  to 
all  appearance,  many  more  things  than  he  doesn't, 
and  how  superlatively  he  is  struck  with  the  promp 
titude  and  wholeness  of  the  American  welcome  and 
of  all  its  friendly  service.  What  it  is  but  too  easy, 
with  the  pleasure  of  having  known  him,  to  read 
into  all  this  is  the  operation  of  his  own  irresistible 
quality,  and  of  the  state  of  felicity  he  clearly  created 
just  by  appearing  as  a  party  to  the  social  relation. 
He  moves  and  circulates  to  our  vision  as  so  naturally, 
so  beautifully  undesigning  a  weaver  of  that  spell, 
that  we  feel  comparatively  little  of  the  story  told 
even  by  his  diverted  report  of  it;  so  much  fuller 
a  report  would  surely  proceed,  could  we  appeal  to 
their  memory,  their  sense  of  poetry,  from  those 
into  whose  ken  he  floated.  It  is  impossible  not  to 
figure  him,  to  the  last  felicity,  as  he  comes  and  goes, 
presenting  himself  always  with  a  singular  effect 
both  of  suddenness  and  of  the  readiest  Tightness; 
we  should  always  have  liked  to  be  there,  wherever 
it  was,  for  the  justification  of  our  own  fond  confidence 
and  the  pleasure  of  seeing  it  unfailingly  spread  and 
spread.  The  ironies  and  paradoxes  of  his  verse, 


xxxiv  LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

in  all  this  record,  fall  away  from  him;  he  takes  to 
direct  observation  and  accepts  with  perfect  good- 
humour  any  hazards  of  contact,  some  of  the  shocks 
of  encounter  proving  more  muffled  for  him  than 
might,  as  I  say,  have  been  feared — witness  the 
American  Jew  with  whom  he  appears  to  have  spent 
some  hours  in  Canada;  and  of  course  the  "word" 
of  the  whole  thing  is  that  he  simply  reaped  at  every 
|turn  the  harmonising  benefit  that  his  presence 
conferred.  This  it  is  in  especial  that  makes  us 
regret  so  much  the  scanting,  as  we  feel  it,  of  his 
story;  it  deprives  us  in  just  that  proportion  of 
certain  of  the  notes  of  his  appearance  and  his 
"success."  There  was  the  poetic  fact  involved — 
that,  being  so  gratefully  apprehended  everywhere, 
his  own  response  was  inevitably  prescribed  and 
pitched  as  the  perfect  friendly  and  genial  and  liberal 
thing.  Moreover,  the  value  of  his  having  so  let 
himself  loose  in  the  immensity  tells  more  at  each 
step  in  favour  of  his  style;  the  pages  from  Canada, 
where  as  an  impressionist,  he  increasingly  finds  his 
feet,  and  even  finds  to  the  same  increase  a  certain 
comfort  of  association,  are  better  than  those  from 
the  States,  while  those  from  the  Pacific  Islands 
rapidly  brighten  and  enlarge  their  inspiration.  This 
part  of  his  adventure  was  clearly  the  great  success 
and  fell  in  with  his  fancy,  amusing  and  quickening 
and  rewarding  him,  more  than  anything  in  the  whole 
revelation.  He  lightly  performs  the  miracle,  to 
my  own  sense,  which  R.  L.  Stevenson,  which  even 
Pierre  Loti,  taking  however  long  a  rope,  had  not 
performed;  he  charmingly  conjures  away — though 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxxv 

in  this  prose  more  than  in  the  verse  of  his  second 
volume — the  marked  tendency  of  the  whole  exquisite 
region  to  insist  on  the  secret  of  its  charm,  when 
incorrigibly  moved  to  do  so,  only  at  the  expense  of 
its  falling  a  little  flat,  or  turning  a  little  stale,  on 
our  hands.  I  have  for  myself  at  least  marked  the 
tendency,  and  somehow  felt  it  point  a  graceless 
moral,  the  moral  that  as  there  are  certain  faces  too 
well  produced  by  nature  to  be  producible  again 
by  the  painter,  the  portraitist,  so  there  are  certain 
combinations  of  earthly  ease,  of  the  natural  and 
social  art  of  giving  pleasure,  which  fail  of  character, 
or  accent,  even  of  the  power  to  interest,  under  the 
strain  of  transposition  or  of  emphasis.  Rupert, 
with  an  instinct  of  his  own,  transposes  and  insists 
only  in  the  right  degree;  or  what  it  doubtless  comes 
to  is  that  we  simply  see  him  arrested  by  so  vivid 
a  picture  of  the  youth  of  the  world  at  its  blandest 
as  to  make  all  his  culture  seem  a  waste  and  all 
his  questions  a  vanity.  That  is  apparently  the 
very  effect  of  the  Pacific  life  as  those  who  dip  into 
it  seek,  or  feel  that  they  are  expected  to  seek,  to 
report  it;  but  it  reports  itself  somehow  through  these 
pages,  smilingly  cools  itself  off  in  them,  with  the 
lightest  play  of  the  fan  ever  placed  at  its  service. 
Never,  clearly,  had  he  been  on  such  good  terms 
with  the  hour,  never  found  the  life  of  the  senses 
so  anticipate  the  life  of  the  imagination,  or  the  life 
of  the  imagination  so  content  itself  with  the  life  of 
the  senses;  it  is  all  an  abundance  of  amphibious 
felicity — he  was  as  incessant  and  insatiable  a  swimmer 
as  if  he  had  been  a  triton  framed  for  a  decoration; 


xxxvi  LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

and  one  half  makes  out  that  some  low-lurking  instinct, 
some  vague  foreboding  of  what  awaited  him,  on 
his  own  side  the  globe,  in  the  air  of  so-called  civilisa 
tion,  prompted  him  to  drain  to  the  last  drop  the 
whole  perfect  negation  of  the  acrid.  He  might  have 
been  waiting  for  the  tide  of  the  insipid  to  begin  to 
flow  again,  as  it  seems  ever  doomed  to  do  when  the 
acrid 5  the  saving  acrid,  has  already  ebbed;  at  any 
rate  his  holiday  had  by  the  end  of  the  springtime 
of__I914  done  for  him  all  it  could,  without  a  grain  of 
waste—Us  assimilations ~ "being"  neither  loose  nor 
Uteral,  ~TOd~he  came  back  to  England  as  promis-_ 
cuously  qualified,  as  variously  quickened,  as  his 
best  "Friends  could  wish  for  fine  production  and  fine 
illustration  in  some  order  still  awaiting  sharp 
definition.  Never  certainly  had  the  free  poetic 
sense  in  him  more  rejoiced  in  an  incorruptible 
sincerity. 

IV 

He  was  caught  up  of  course  after  the  shortest 
interval  by  the  strong  rush  of  that  general  inspiration 
in  which  at  first  all  differences,  all  individual  relations 
to  the  world  he  lived  in,  seemed  almost  ruefully 
or  bewilderedly  to  lose  themselves.  The  pressing 
thing  was  of  a  sudden  that  youth  was  youth  and 
genius  community  and  sympathy.  He  plunged 
into  that  full  measure  of  these  things  which  simply 
made  and  spread  itself  as  it  gathered  them  in,  made 
itself  of  responses  and  faiths  and  understandings 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxxvii 

that  were  all  the  while  in  themselves  acts  of  curiosity, 
romantic  and  poetic  throbs  and  wonderments,  with 
reality,  as  it  seemed  to  call  itself,  breaking  in  after 
a  fashion  that  left  the  whole  past  pale,  and  that 
yet  could  flush  at  every  turn  with  meanings  and 
visions  borrowing  their  expression  from  whatever 
had,  among  those  squandered  preliminaries,  those 
too  merely  sportive  intellectual  and  critical  values, 
happened  to  make  most  for  the  higher  truth.  Of 
the  successions  of  his  matter  of  history  at  this  time 
Mr  Marsh's  memoir  is  the  infinitely  touching  record 
— touching  after  the  fact,  but  to  the  accompaniment 
even  at  the  time  of  certain  now  almost  ineffable 
reflections;  this  especially,  I  mean,  if  one  happened 
to  be  then  not  wholly  without  familiar  vision  of 
him.  What  could  strike  one  more,  for  the  immense 
occasion,  than  the  measure  that  might  be  involved 
in  it  of  desolating  and  heart-breaking  waste,  waste  of 
quality,  waste  for  that  matter  of  quantity,  waste 
of  all  the  rich  redundancies,  all  the  light  and  all 
the  golden  store,  which  up  to  then  had  formed  the 
very  price  and  grace  of  life?  Yet  out  of  the  depths 
themselves  of  this  question  rose  the  other,  the 
tormenting,  the  sickening  and  at  the  same  time  the 
strangely  sustaining,  of  why,  since  the  offering 
couldn't  at  best  be  anything  but  great,  it  wouldn't 
be  great  just  in  proportion  to  its  purity,  or  in  other 
words  its  wholeness,  everything  in  it  that  could 
make  it  most  radiant  and  restless.  Exquisite  at 
such  times  the  hushed  watch  of  the  mere  hovering 
spectator  unrelieved  by  any  action  of  his  own  to 


xxxviii    LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

take,  which  consists  at  once  of  so  much  wonder  for 
why  the  finest  of  the  fine  should,  to  the  sacrifice 
of  the  faculty  we  most  know  them  by,  have  to 
become  mere  morsels  in  the  huge  promiscuity, 
and  of  the  thrill  of  seeing  that  they  add  more  than 
ever  to  our  knowledge  and  our  passion,  which 
somehow  thus  becomes  at  the  same  time  an  un 
fathomable  abyss. 

Rupert^who  had  joined  the  Naval  Brigade,  took 
part  in  the  rather  distractedly  improvised — as  it 
at  least  at  the  moment  appeared — movement  for 
the  relief  of  the  doomed  Antwerp,  but  was,  later 
on,  after  the  return  of  the  force  so  engaged,  for  a 
few  days  in  London,  whither  he  had  come  up  from 
camp  in  Dorsetshire,  briefly  invalided;  thanks  to 
which  accident  I  had  on  a  couple  of  occasions  my 
last  sight  of  him.  It  was  all  auspiciously,  well- 
nigh  extravagantly,  congruous;  nothing  certainly 
could  have  been  called  more  modern  than  all  the 
elements  and  suggestions  of  his  situation  for  the 
hour,  the  very  spot  in  London  that  could  best  serve 
as  a  centre  for  vibrations  the  keenest  and  most 
various;  a  challenge  to  the  appreciation  of  life, 
to  that  of  the  whole  range  of  the  possible  English 
future,  at  its  most  uplifting.  He  had  not  yet  so 
much  struck  me  as  an  admirable  nature  en  dis- 
ponibilite  and  such  as  any  cause,  however  high, 
might  swallow  up  with  a  sense  of  being  the  sounder 
and  sweeter  for.  More  definitely  perhaps  the  young 
poet,  with  all  the  wind  alive  in  his  sails,  was  as 
evident  there  in  the  guise  of  the  young  soldier  and 


RUPERT  BROOKE  xxxix 

the  thrice  welcome  young  friend,  who  'yet,  I  all 
recognisably  remember,  insisted  on  himself  as  little 
as  ever  in  either  character,  and  seemed  even  more 
disposed  than  usual  not  to  let  his  intelligibility 
interfere  with  his  modesty.  He  promptly  recovered 
and  returned  to  camp,  whence  it  was  testified  that 
his  specific  practical  aptitude,  under  the  lively  call, 
left  nothing  to  be  desired — a  fact  that  expressed 
again,  to  the  perception  of  his  circle,  with  what 
truth  the  spring  of  inspiration  worked  in  him,  in 
the  sense,  I  mean,  that  his  imagination  itself 
shouldered  and  made  light  of  the  material  load. 
It  had  not  yet,  at  the  same  time,  been  more  associ- 
atedly  active  in  a  finer  sense;  my  own  next  appre 
hension  of  it  at  least  was  in  reading  the  five  admir 
able  sonnets  that  had  been  published  in  "New 
Numbers"  after  the  departure  of  his  contingent 
for  the  campaign  at  the  Dardanelles.  To  read  these 
in  the  light  of  one's  personal  knowledge  of  him  was 
to  draw  from  them,  inevitably,  a  meaning  still 
deeper  seated  than  their  noble  beauty,  an  authority, 
of  the  purest,  attended  with  which  his  name  in 
scribes  itself  in  its  own  character  on  the  great  English 
scroll.  The  impression,  the  admiration,  the  anxiety 
settled  immediately — to  my  own  sense  at  least — 
as  upon  something  that  would  but  too  sharply  feed 
them,  falling  in  as  it  did  with  that  whole  particularly 
animated  vision  of  him  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
He  had  never  seemed  more  animated  with  our 
newest  and  leafst  deluded,  least  conventionalised 
life  and  perception  and  sensibility,  and  that  formula 


xl         LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

of  his  so  distinctively  fortunate,  his  overflowing 
share  in  our  most  developed  social  heritage  which 
had  already  glimmered,  began  with  this  occasion 
to  hang  about  him  as  one  of  the  aspects,  really  a 
shining  one,  of  his  fate. 

*  So  I  remember  irrepressibly  thinking  and  feeling, 
unspeakably  apprehending,  in  a  word;  and  so  the 
whole  exquisite  exhalation  of  his  own  consciousness 
in  the  splendid  sonnets,  attach  whatever  essentially 
or  exclusively  poetic  value  to  it  we  might,  baffled 
or  defied  us  as  with  a  sort  of  supreme  Tightness. 
Everything  about  him  of  keenest  and  brightest 
(yes,  absolutely  of  brightest)  suggestion  made  so 
for  his  having  been  charged  with  every  privilege, 
every  humour,  of  our  merciless  actuality,  our  fatal 
excess  of  opportunity,  that  what  indeed  could  the 
full  assurance  of  this  be  but  that,  finding  in  him 
the  most  charming  object  in  its  course,  the  great 
tide  was  to  lift  him  and  sweep  him  away  ?  Questions 
and  reflections  after  the  fact  perhaps,  yet  haunting 
for  the  time  and  during  the  short  interval  that  was 
still  to  elapse — when,  with  the  sudden  news  that  he 
had  met  his  doom,  an  irrepressible  "of  course,  of 
course ! "  contributed  its  note  well-nigh  of  support. 
It  was  as  if  the  peculiar  richness  of  his  youth  had 
itself  marked  its  limit,  so  that  what  his  own  spirit 
was  inevitably  to  feel  about  his  "chance" — in 
evitably  because  both  the  high  pitch  of  the  romantic 
and  the  ironic  and  the  opposed  abyss  of  the  real 
came  together  in  it — required,  in  the  wondrous 
way,  the  consecration  of  the  event.  The  event  came 


EUPERT  BROOKE  xli 

indeed  not  in  the  manner  prefigured  by  him  in  the 
repeatedly  perfect  line,  that  of  the  received  death- 
stroke,  the  fall  in  action,  discounted  as  such;  which 
might  have  seemed  very  much  because  even  the 
harsh  logic  and  pressure  of  history  were  tender  of 
him  at  the  last  and  declined  to  go  through  more 
than  the  form  of  their  function,  discharging  it  with 
the  least  violence  and  surrounding  it  as  with  a 
legendary  light.  He  was  taken  ill,  as  an  effect  of 

blood-poisoning., on    his way__from  _ Alexandri a    to 

GalHpoli,  and,  getting  ominously  and  rapidly  worse, 
was'Teln^vedTrom jhis  j^aiispQitLto  a  French  hospital 
shlp7"^Tierej^r£ejp£pachably ;__  cared _  for,  he  died  in 
a~Iew  hours  and  without  coming  to  consciousness.. 
T~  deny'  "myself  any  further  anticipation  of  the  story 
to  which  further  noble  associations  attach,  and 
the  merest  outline  of  which  indeed  tells  it  and  rounds 
it  off  absolutely  as  the  right  harmony  would  have 
it.  It  is  perhaps  even  a  touch  beyond  any  dreamt- 
of  harmony  that,  ~  under  "~6mi33TOn'~  of"  no  martial 
hbnbur,  "Ke^was  to  be  carried  by~cbinrades  and  de- 
votedT"  waiting  sharers,  whose  evidence  survives 
them,  to  the  steep  summit  jof  a_Greek_  island  of 
infinite  grace  and  there  placed  in  such  earth  and 
amid  such  beauty  of  light  and  shade  and  embracing 
prospect  _as__that  the  fondest  reading  of  his  young 
lifetime  could  have  suggested "nothing ""tetter.  It 
struck  us  at  home,  T~ mean,  as""synibolMng  with  the 
last  refinement  his  whole  instinct  of  selection  and 
response,  his  relation  to  the  overcharged  appeal 
of  his  scene  and  hour.  How  could  he  have  shown 


xlii       LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

more  the  young  English  poetic  possibility  and 
faculty  in  which  we  were  to  seek  the  freshest  re 
flection  of  the  intelligence  and  the  soul  of  the  new 
generation?  The  generosity,  I  may  fairly  say  the 
joy,  of  his  contribution  to  the  general  perfect  way 
makes  a  monument  of  his  high  rest  there  at_the 
heart  of  all  that  was  once  noblest  in  history. 

HENRY  JAMES 


I 

ARRIVAL 


I 

ARRIVAL 

HOWEVER  sedulously  he  may  have  avoided  a 
preparatory  reading  of  those  'impressions' 
of  America  which  our  hurried  and  observant 
Great  continually  record  for  the  instruction 
of  both  nations,  the  pilgrim  who  is  crossing 
the  Atlantic  for  the  first  time  cannot  approach 
Sandy  Hook  Bar  with  so  completely  blank  a 
mind  as  he  would  wish.  So,  at  least,  I  found. 
It  is  not  so  much  that  the  recent  American 
invasion  of  London  music-halls  has  bitten 
into  one's  brain  a  very  definite  taste  of  a 
jerking,  vital,  bizarre  'rag-time'  civilisation. 
But  the  various  and  vivid  comments  of 
friends  to  whom  the  news  of  a  traveller's 
departure  is  broken  excite  and  predispose 
the  imagination.  That  so  many  people  who 
had  been  there  should  have  such  different 
and  decided  opinions  about  it !  It  must  be 
at  least  remarkable.  I  felt  the  thrill  of  an 
explorer  before  I  started.  "A  country  with 
out  conversation,"  said  a  philosopher.  "The 

3 


4          LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

big  land  has  a  big  heart,"  wrote  a  kindly 
scholar;  and,  by  the  same  post,  from  another 
critic,  "that  land  of  crushing  hospitality!" 
"It's  Hell,  but  it's  fine,"  an  artist  told  me. 
"El  Cuspidorado,"  remarked  an  Oxford  man, 
brilliantly.  But  one  wiser  than  all  the  rest 
wrote:  "Think  gently  of  the  Americans. 
They  are  so  very  young;  and  so  very  anxious 
to  appear  grown-up;  and  so  very  lovable." 
This  was  more  generous  than  the  unvarying 
comment  of  ordinary  English  friends  when 
they  heard  of  my  purpose,  "My  God!" 
And  it  was  more  precise  than  those  nineteen 
several  Americans,  to  each  of  whom  I  said, 
"I  am  going  to  visit  America,"  and  each  of 
whom  replied,  after  long  reflection,  "Wai! 
it's  a  great  country !" 

Travelling  by  the  ordinary  routes,  you  meet 
the  American  people  a  week  before  you  meet 
America.  And  my  excitement  to  discover 
what,  precisely,  this  nation  was  at,  was  in 
flamed  rather  than  damped  by  the  attitude 
of  a  charming  American  youth  who  crossed 
by  the  same  boat.  That  simplicity  that  is 
not  far  down  in  any  American  was  very 
beautifully  on  the  delightful  surface  with  him. 
The  second  day  out  he  sidled  shyly  up  to  me. 
"Of  what  nationality  are  you?"  he  asked. 


ARRIVAL  5 

\  * 

His  face  showed  bewilderment  when  he  heard. 

"I  thought  all  Englishmen  had  moustaches," 
he  said.  I  told  him  of  the  infinite  variety, 
within  the  homogeneity,  of  our  race.  He  did 
not  listen,  but  settled  down  near  me  with  the 
eager  kindliness  of  a  child.  "You  know," 
he  said,  "you'll  never  understand  America. 
No,  Sir.  No  Englishman  can  understand 
America.  I've  been  in  London.  In  your 
Houses  of  Parliament  there  is  one  door  for 
peers  to  go  in  at,  and  one  for  ordinary  people. 
Did  I  laugh  some  when  I  saw  that?  'You 
bet  your '  life,  America's  not  like  that.  In 
America  one  man's  just  as  good  as  another. 
You'll  never  understand  America."  I  was 
all  humility.  His  theme  and  his  friendliness 
fired  him.  He  rose  with  a  splendour  which, 
I  had  to  confess  to  myself,  England  could 
never  have  given  to  him.  "Would  you  like 
to  hear  me  re-cite  to  you  the  Declaration  of 
Independence?"  he  asked.  And  he  did. 

So  it  was  with  a  fairly  blank  mind,  and  yet 
a  hope  of  understanding,  or  at  least  of  seeing, 
something  very  remarkably  fresh,  that  I  woke 
to  hear  we  were  in  harbour,  and  tumbled  out 
on  deck  at  six  of  a  fine  summer  morning  to 
view  a  new  world.  New  York  Harbour  is 
loveliest  at  night  perhaps.  On  the  Staten 


6          LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

Island  ferry-boat  you  slip  out  from  the  dark 
ness  right  under  the  immense  sky-scrapers. 
As  they  recede  they  form  into  a  mass  together, 
heaping  up  one  behind  another,  fire-lined  and 
majestic,  sentinel  over  the  black,  gold-streaked 
waters.  Their  cliff-like  boldness  is  the  greater, 
because  to  either  side  sweep  in  the  East  River 
and  the  Hudson  River,  leaving  this  piled 
promontory  between.  To  the  right  hangs 
the  great  stretch  of  the  Brooklyn  Suspension 
Bridge,  its  slight  curve  very  purely  outlined 
with  light;  over  it  luminous  trams,  like 
shuttles  of  fire,  are  thrown  across  and  across, 
continually  weaving  the  stuff  of  human  exist 
ence.  From  further  off  all  these  lights 
dwindle  to  a  radiant  semicircle  that  gazes 
out  over  the  expanse  with  a  quiet,  mysterious 
expectancy.  Far  away  seaward  you  may 
see  the  low  golden  glare  of  Coney  Island. 

But  there  was  beauty  in  the  view  that 
morning,  also,  half  an  hour  after  sunrise. 
New  York,  always  the  cleanest  and  least 
smoky  of  cities,  lay  asleep  in  a  queer,  pearly, 
hourless  light.  A  thin  mist  softened  the 
further  outlines.  The  water  was  opalescent 
under  a  silver  sky,  cool  and  dim,  very  slightly 
ruffled  by  the  sweet  wind  that  followed  us  in 
from  the  sea.  A  few  streamers  of  smoke  flew 


ARRIVAL  7 

above  the  city,  oblique  and  parallel,  pennants 
of  our  civilisation.  The  space  of  water  is 
great,  and  so  the  vast  buildings  do  not  tower 
above  one  as  they  do  from  the  street.  Scale 
is  lost,  and  they  might  be  any  size.  The 
impression  is,  rather,  of  long,  low  buildings 
stretching  down  to  the  water's  edge  on  every 
side,  and  innumerable  low  black  wharves 
and  jetties  and  piers.  And  at  one  point,  the 
lower  end  of  the  island  on  which  the  city 
proper  stands,  rose  that  higher  clump  of  the 
great  buildings,  the  Singer,  the  Woolworth, 
and  the  rest.  Their  strength,  almost  severity, 
of  line  and  the  lightness  of  their  colour  gave 
a  kind  of  classical  feeling,  classical,  and  yet 
not  of  Europe.  It  had  the  air,  this  block  of 
masonry,  of  edifices  built  to  satisfy  some  faith, 
for  more  than  immediate  ends.  Only,  the 
faith  was  unfamiliar.  But  if  these  buildings 
embodied  its  nature,  it  is  cold  and  hard  and 
light,  like  the  steel  that  is  their  heart.  The 
first  sight  of  these  strange  fanes  has  queer 
resemblances  to  the  first  sight  of  that  lonely 
and  secret  group  by  Pisa's  walls.  It  came 
upon  me,  at  that  moment,  that  they  could 
not  have  been  dreamed  and  made  without 
some  nobility.  Perhaps  the  hour  lent  them 
sanctity.  For  I  have  often  noticed  since 


8          LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

that  in  the  early  morning,  and  again  for  a 
little  about  sunset,  the  sky-scrapers  are  no 
longer  merely  the  means  and  local  convenience 
for  men  to  pursue  their  purposes,  but  acquire 
that  characteristic  of  the  great  buildings  of 
the  world,  an  existence  and  meaning  of  their  >, 
own. 

Our  boat  moved  up  the  harbour  and  along 
the  Hudson  River  with  a  superb  and  courteous 
stateliness.  Round  her  snorted  and  scuttled 
and  puffed  the  multitudinous  strange  deni 
zens  of  the  harbour.  Tugs,  steamers,  queer- 
shaped  ferry-boats,  long  rafts  carrying  great 
lines  of  trucks  from  railway  to  railway, 
dredgers,  motor-boats,  even  a  sailing-boat  or 
two;  for  the  day's  work  was  beginning. 
Among  them,  with  that  majesty  that  only  a 
liner  entering  a  harbour  has,  she  went,  pro 
gressed,  had  her  moving — English  contains 
no  word  for  such  a  motion — "incessu  patuit 
dea."  A  goddess  entering  fairyland,  I  thought; 
for  the  huddled  beauty  of  these  buildings  and 
the  still,  silver  expanse  of  the  water  seemed 
unreal.  Then  I  looked  down  at  the  water 
immediately  beneath  me,  and  knew  that 
New  York  was  a  real  city.  All  kinds  of  refuse 
went  floating  by:  bits  of  wood,  straw  from 
barges,  bottles,  boxes,  paper,  occasionally  a 


ARRIVAL  9 

dead  cat  or  dog,  hideously  bladder-like,  its 
four  paws  stiff  and  indignant  towards  heaven. 
This  analysis  of  fairyland  turned  me  to 
wards  the  statue  of  Liberty,  already  passed 
and  growing  distant.  It  is  one  of  those 
things  you  have  long  wanted  to  see  and 
haven't  expected  to  admire,  which,  seen, 
give  you  a  double  thrill,  that  they're  at  last 
there,  and  that  they're  better  than  your  hopes. 
For  Liberty  stands  nobly.  Americans,  always 
shy  about  their  country,  have  learnt  from  the 
ridicule  which  Europeans,  on  mixed  aesthetic 
and  moral  grounds,  pour  on  this  statue,  to 
dismiss  it  with  an  apologetic  laugh.  Yet  it 
is  fine — until  you  get  near  enough  to  see  its 
clumsiness.  I  admired  the  great  gesture  of 
it.  A  hand  fell  on  my  shoulder,  and  a  voice 
said,  "Look  hard  at  that,  young  man! 
That's  the  first  time  you've  seen  Liberty — and 
it  will  be  the  last  till  you  turn  your  back  on 
this  country  again."  It  was  an  American 
fellow-passenger,  one  of  the  tall,  thin  type  of 
American,  with  pale  blue  eyes  of  an  idealistic, 
disappointed  expression,  and  an  Indian  profile. 
The  other  half  of  America,  personated  by  a 
small,  bumptious,  eager,  brown-faced  man,  with 
a  cigar  raking  at  an  irritating  angle  from  the 
corner  of  his  mouth,  joined  in  with,  "Wai! 


10        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

I  should  smile,  I  guess  this  is  the  Land  of 
Freedom,  anyway."  The  tall  man  swung 
round:  "Freedom!  do  you  call  it  a  free 

land,  where "     He  gave  instances  of  the 

power  of  the  dollar.  The  other  man  kept  up 
the  argument  by  spitting  and  by  assevera 
tion.  As  the  busy  little  tugs,  with  rugs  on 
their  noses,  butted  the  great  liner  into  her 
narrow  dock,  the  pessimist  launched  his  last 
shafts.  The  short  man  denied  nothing.  He 
drew  the  cigar  from  his  lips,  shot  it  back  with 
a  popping  noise  into  the  round  hole  cigars 
had  worn  at  the  corner  of  his  mouth,  and 
said,  "Anyway,  it's  some  country."  I  was 
introduced  to  America. 


II 

NEW  YORK 


II 

NEW  YORK 

IN  five  things  America  excels  modern  Eng 
land — fish,  architecture,  jokes,  drinks,  and 
children's  clothes.  There  may  be  others.  Of 
these  I  am  certain.  The  jokes  and  drinks, 
which  curiously  resemble  each  other,  are  the 
best.  There  is  a  cheerful  violence  about 
them;  they  take  their  respective  kingdoms  by 
storm.  All  the  lesser  things  one  has  heard 
turn  out  to  be  delightfully  true.  The  first 
hour  in  America  proves  them.  People  here 
talk  with  an  American  accent;  their  teeth 
are  inlaid  with  gold;  the  mouths  of  car-con 
ductors  move  slowly,  slowly,  with  an  oblique 
oval  motion,  for  they  are  chewing;  pave 
ments  are  *  sidewalks.'  It  is  all  true.  .  .  . 
But  there  were  other  things  one  expected, 
though  in  no  precise  form.  What,  for  in 
stance,  would  it  be  like,  the  feeling  of  what 
ever  democracy  America  has  secured  ? 

I  landed,  rather  forlorn,  that  first  morning, 
on    the   immense   covered    wharf   where   the 

13 


14         LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

\  Customs  mysteries  were  to  be  celebrated. 
The  place  was  dominated  by  a  large,  dirty, 
vociferous  man,  coatless,  in  a  black  shirt  and 
black  apron.  His  mouth  and  jaw  were  huge; 
he  looked  like  a  caricaturist's  Roosevelt. 
'Express  Company'  was  written  on  his  fore 
head;  labels  of  a  thousand  colours,  printed 
slips,  pencils  and  pieces  of  string,  hung  from 
his  pockets  and  his  hands,  were  held  behind 
his  ears  and  in  his  mouth.  I  laid  my  situa 
tion  and  my  incompetence  before  him,  and 
learnt  right  where  to  go  and  right  when  to 
go  there.  Then  he  flung  a  vast,  dingy  arm 
round  my  shoulders,  and  bellowed,  "We'll 
have  your  baggage  right  along  to  your  hotel 
in  two  hours."  It  was  a  lie,  but  kindly.  That 
grimy  and  generous  embrace  left  me  startled, 
but  an  initiate  into  Democracy. 

The  other  evening  I  went  a  lonely  ramble, 
to  try  to  detect  the  essence  of  New  York. 
A  wary  eavesdropper  can  always  surprise  the 
secret  of  a  city,  through  chance  scraps  of 
conversation,  or  by  spying  from  a  window,  or 
by  coming  suddenly  round  corners.  I  started 
on  a  'car.'  American  tram-cars  are  open 
all  along  the  side  and  can  be  entered  at  any 
point  in  it.  The  side  is  divided  by  vertical 
bars.  It  looks  like  a  cage  with  the  horizontal 


NEW  YORK  15 

lines  taken  out.  Between  these  vertical  bars 
you  squeeze  into  the  seat.  If  the  seat  oppo 
site  you  is  full,  you  swing  yourself  along  the 
bars  by  your  hands  till  you  find  room.  The 
Americans  become  terrifyingly  expert  at  this. 
I  have  seen  them,  fat,  middle-aged  business 
men,  scampering  up  and  down  the  face  of 
the  cars  by  means  of  their  hands,  swinging 
themselves  over  and  round  and  above  each 
other,  like  nothing  in  the  world  so  much  as 
the  monkeys  at  the  Zoo.  It  is  a  people  in 
formed  with  vital  energy.  I  believe  that  this 
exercise,  and  the  habit  of  drinking  a  lot  of 
water  between  meals,  are  the  chief  causes  of 
their  good  health. 

The  Broadway  car  runs  mostly  along  the 
backbone  of  the  queer  island  on  which  this 
city  stands.  So  the  innumerable  parallel 
streets  that  cross  it  curve  down  and  away; 
and  at  this  time  street  after  street  to  the 
west  reveals,  and  seems  to  drop  into,  a 
mysterious  evening  sky,  full  of  dull  reds  and 
yellows,  amber  and  pale  green,  and  a  few  pink 
flecks,  and  in  the  midst,  sometimes,  the  flushed, 
smoke- veiled  face  of  the  sun.  Then  greyness, 
broken  by  these  patches  of  misty  colour, 
settles  into  the  lower  channels  of  the  New 
York  streets;  while  the  upper  heights  of  the 


16        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

sky-scrapers,  clear  of  the  roofs,  are  still  lit  on 
the  sunward  side  with  a  mellow  glow,  curi 
ously  serene.  To  the  man  in  the  mirk  of  the 
street,  they  seem  to  exude  this  light  from  the 
great  spaces  of  brick.  At  this  time  the  cars, 
always  polyglot,  are  filled  with  shop-hands 
and  workers,  and  no  English  at  all  is  heard. 
One  is  surrounded  with  Yiddish,  Italian, 
and  Greek,  broken  by  Polish,  or  Russian, 
or  German.  Some  American  anthropologists 
claim  that  the  children  of  these  immigrants 
show  marked  changes,  in  the  shape  of  skull 
and  face,  towards  the  American  type.  It 
may  be  so.  But  the  people  who  surround 
one  are  mostly  European-born.  They  repre 
sent  very  completely  that  H.C.F.  of  Conti 
nental  appearance  which  is  labelled  in  the 
English  mind  'looking  like  a  foreigner'; 
being  short,  swarthy,  gesticulatory,  full  of 
clatter,  indeterminately  alien.  Only  in  their 
dress  and  gait  have  they — or  at  least  the  men 
among  them — become  at  all  American. 

The  American  by  race  walks  better  than 
we;  more  freely,  with  a  taking  swing,  and 
almost  with  grace.  How  much  of  this  is  due 
to  living  in  a  democracy,  and  how  much  to 
wearing  no  braces,  it  is  very  difficult  to 
determine.  But  certainly  it  is  the  land  of 


NEW  YORK  17 

belts,  and  therefore  of  more  loosely  moving 
bodies.  This,  and  the  padded  shoulders  of 
the  coats,  and  the  loosely-cut  trousers,  make 
a  figure  more  presentable,  at  a  distance,  than 
most  urban  civilisations  turn  out.  Also, 
Americans  take  their  coats  off,  which  is 
sensible;  and  they  can  do  it  the  more  beauti 
fully  because  they  are  belted,  and  not  braced. 
They  take  their  coats  off  anywhere  and  any- 
when,  and  somehow  it  strikes  the  visitor  as 
the  most  symbolic  thing  about  them.  They 
have  not  yet  thought  of  discarding  collars; 
but  they  are  unashamedly  shirt-sleeved.  Any 
sculptor,  seeking  to  figure  this  Republic  in 
stone,  must  carve,  in  future,  a  young  man  in 
shirt-sleeves,  open-faced,  pleasant,  and  rather 
vulgar,  straw  hat  on  the  back  of  his  head, 
his  trousers  full  and  sloppy,  his  coat  over  his 
arm.  The  motto  written  beneath  will  be,  of 
course,  'This  is  some  country.'  The  philo 
sophic  gazer  on  such  a  monument  might  get 
some  way  towards  understanding  the  making 
of  the  Panama  Canal,  that  exploit  that  no 
European  nation  could  have  carried  out. 

What  facial  type  the  sculptor  would  give 
the  youth  is  harder  to  determine,  and  very 
hard  to  describe.  The  American  race  seems 
to  have  developed  two  classes,  and  only  two, 


18        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

the  upper-middle  and  the  lower-middle.  Their 
faces  are  very  distinct.  The  upper-class  head 
is  long,  often  fine  about  the  forehead  and  eyes, 
and  very  cleanly  outlined.  The  eyes  have 
an  odd,  tired  pathos  in  them — mixed  with  the 
friendliness  that  is  so  admirable — as  if  of  a 
perpetual  never  quite  successful  effort  to 
understand  something.  It  is  like  the  face 
of  an  only  child  who  has  been  brought  up  in 
the  company  of  adults.  I  am  convinced  it 
is  partly  due  to  the  endeavour  to  set  their 
standards  by  the  culture  and  traditions  of 
older  nations.  But  the  mouth  of  such  men 
is  the  most  typical  feature.  It  is  small,  tight, 
and  closed  downwards  at  the  corners,  the 
lower  lip  very  slightly  protruding.  It  has 
little  expression  in  it,  and  no  curves.  There 
the  Puritan  comes  out.  But  no  other  nation 
has  a  mouth  like  this.  It  is  shared  to  some 
extent  by  the  lower  classes;  but  their  mouths 
tend  to  be  wider  and  more  expressive.  Their 
foreheads  are  meaner,  and  their  eyes  hard, 
but  the  whole  face  rather  more  adaptive  and 
in  touch  with  life.  These,  anyhow,  are  the 
types  that  strike  one  in  the  Eastern  cities. 
And  there  are  intermediate  varieties,  as  of 
the  genial  business-man,  with  the  narrow 
forehead  and  the  wide,  smooth — the  too  wide 


NEW  YORK  10 

and  too  smooth — lower  face.  Smoothness 
is  the  one  unfailing  characteristic.  Why  do 
American  faces  hardly  ever  wrinkle?  Is  it 
the  absence  of  a  soul?  It  must  be.  For  it 
is  less  true  of  the  Bostonian  than  of  the 
ordinary  business  American,  in  whose  life 
exhilaration  and  depression  take  the  place  of 
joy  and  suffering.  The  women's  faces  are 
more  indeterminate,  not  very  feminine;  many 
of  them  wear  those  '  in  visible'  pince-nez 
which  centre  glitteringly  about  the  bridge 
of  the  nose,  and  get  from  them  a  curious 
air  of  intelligence.  Handsome  people  of  both 
sexes  are  very  common;  beautiful,  and  pretty, 
ones  very  rare.  .  .  . 

I  slipped  from  my  car  up  about  Fortieth 
Street,  the  region  where  the  theatres  and 
restaurants  are,  the  'roaring  forties.'  Broad 
way  here  might  be  the  offspring  of  Shaftesbury 
Avenue  and  Leicester  Square,  with,  somehow, 
some  of  Fleet  Street  also  in  its  ancestry.  I 
passed  two  men  on  the  sidewalk,  their  hats 
on  the  back  of  their  heads,  arguing  fiercely. 
One  had  slightly  long  hair.  The  other  looked 
the  more  truculent,  and  was  saying  to  him, 
intensely,  "See  here!  We  con — tracted  with 
you  to  supply  us  with  sonnets  at  five  dollars 
per  sonnet "  I  passed  up  a  side-street,  one 


20        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

of  those  deserted  ways  that  abound  just 
off  the  big  streets,  resorts,  apparently,  for 
such  people  and  things  as  are  not  quite 
strident  or  not  quite  energetic  enough  for  the 
ordinary  glare  of  life;  dim  places,  fusty  with 
hesternal  excitements  and  the  thrills  of  yester 
year.  Against  a  flight  of  desolate  steps  leant 
a  notice.  I  stopped  to  read  it.  It  said: 

"You  must  see  Cockle, 

Positively  the  only  bird  that  can  both  dance  and  sing. 
She  is  almost  superhuman." 

There  was  no  explanation;  Cockie  may  have 
been  dead  for  years.  I  went,  musing  on  her 
possible  fates,  towards  the  pride  and  spacious 
ness  of  Fifth  Avenue. 

Fifth  Avenue  is  handsome,  the  handsomest 
street  imaginable.  It  is  what  the  streets 
of  German  cities  try  to  be.  The  buildings 
are  large,  square,  'imposing,'  built  with  the 
solidity  of  opulence.  The  street,  as  a  whole, 
has  a  character  and  an  air  of  achievement. 
'Whatever  else  may  be  doubted  or  denied, 
American  civilisation  has  produced  this."  One 
feels  rich  and  safe  as  one  walks.  Back  in 
Broadway,  New  York  dropped  her  mask,  and 
began  to  betray  herself  once  again.  A  little 
crowd,  expressionless,  intent,  and  volatile, 


NEW  YORK  21 

before  a  small  shop,  drew  me.  In  the  shop- 
window  was  a  young  man,  pleasant-faced,  a 
little  conscious,  and  a  little  bored,  dressed 
very  lightly  in  what  might  have  been  a  run 
ner's  costume.  He  was  bowing,  twisting,  and 
posturing  in  a  slow  rhythm.  From  time  to 
time  he  would  put  a  large  card  on  a  little 
stand  in  the  corner.  The  cards  bore  various 
legends.  He  would  display  a  card  that  said, 

"THIS  UNDERWEAR  DOES  NOT  IMPEDE  THE 
MOVEMENT  OF  THE  BODY  IN  ANY  DIRECTION." 

Then  he  moved  his  body  in  every  direction, 
from  position  to  position,  probable  or  im 
probable,  and  was  not  impeded.  With  a 
terrible  dumb  patience  he  turned  the  next 
card:  "IT  GIVES  WITH  THE  BODY  IN  VIOLENT 
EXERCISING."  The  young  man  leapt  suddenly, 
lunged,  smote  imaginary  balls,  belaboured 
invisible  opponents,  ran  with  immense  speed 
but  no  progress,  was  thrown  to  earth  by  the 
Prince  of  the  Air,  kicked,  struggled,  then 
bounded  to  his  feet  again.  But  all  this 
without  a  word.  "!T  ENABLES  YOU  TO  KEEP 
COOL  WHILE  EXERCISING."  The  young  man 
exercised,  and  yet  was  cool.  He  did  this, 
I  discovered  later,  for  many  hours  a  day. 

Not  daring  to  imagine  his  state  of  mind,  I 
hurried   off  through  Union   Square.     One  of 


22        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

the  many  daily  fire-alarms  had  gone;  the 
traffic  was  drawn  to  one  side,  and  several 
fire-engines  came,  with  clanging  of  bells  and 
shouting,  through  the  space,  gleaming  with 
brass,  splendid  in  their  purpose.  Before  the 
thrill  in  the  heart  had  time  to  die,  or  the 
traffic  to  close  up,  swung  through  an  immense 
open  motor-car  driven  by  a  young  mechanic. 
It  was  luxuriously  appointed,  and  had  the  air 
of  a  private  car  being  returned  from  repair 
ing.  The  man  in  it  had  an  almost  Swinburnian 
mane  of  red  hair,  blowing  back  in  the  wind, 
catching  the  last  lights  of  day.  He  was  clad, 
as  such  people  often  are  in  this  country  these 
hot  days,  only  in  a  suit  of  yellow  overalls,  so 
that  his  arms  and  shoulders  and  neck  and  chest 
were  bare.  He  was  big,  well-made,  and  strong, 
and  he  drove  the  car,  not  wildly,  but  a  little 
too  fast,  leaning  back  rather  insolently,  con 
scious  of  power.  In  private  life,  no  doubt,  a 
very  ordinary  youth,  interested  only  in  base 
ball  scores;  but  in  this  brief  passage  he 
seemed  like  a  Greek  god,  in  a  fantastically 
modern,  yet  not  unworthy  way  emblemed  and 
incarnate,  or  like  the  spirit  of  Henley's  'Song 
of  Speed.'  So  I  found  a  better  image  of 
America  for  my  sculptor  than  the  shirt- 
sleeved  young  man. 


Ill 

NEW  YORK 


Ill 

NEW  YORK  (continued) 

THE  hotel  into  which  the  workings  of  blind 
chance  have  thrown  me  is  given  over  to  com 
mercial  travellers.  Its  life  is  theirs,  and  the 
few  English  tourists  creep  in  and  out  with 
the  shy,  bewildered  dignity  of  their  race  and 
class.  These  American  commercial  travellers 
are  called  'drummers';  drummers  in  the  most 
endless  and  pointless  and  extraordinary  of 
wars.  They  have  the  air  and  appearance  of 
devotees,  men  set  aside,  roaming  preachers  of 
a  jehad  whose  meaning  they  have  forgotten. 
They  seem  to  be  invariably  of  the  short,  dark 
type.  The  larger,  fair-haired,  long-headed 
men  are  common  in  business,  but  not  in 
'drumming.'  The  drummer's  eyes  have  a 
hard,  rapt  expression.  He  is  not  interested 
in  the  romance  of  the  road,  like  an  English 
commercial  traveller,  only  in  its  ever-chang 
ing  end.  These  people  are  for  ever  sending 
off  and  receiving  telegrams,  messages,  and 
cablegrams;  they  are  continually  telephoning; 

25 


26        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

stenographers  are  in  waiting  to  record  their 
inspirations.  In  the  intervals  of  activity  they 
relapse  into  a  curious  trance,  husbanding  their 
vitality  for  the  next  crisis.  I  have  watched 
them  with  terror  and  fascination.  All  day 
there  are  numbers  of  them  sitting,  immote  and 
vacant,  in  rows  and  circles  on  the  hard  chairs 
in  the  hall.  They  are  never  smoking,  never 
reading  a  paper,  never  even  chewing.  The 
expressions  of  their  faces  never  change.  It  is 
impossible  to  guess  what,  or  if  anything,  is  in 
their  minds.  Hour  upon  hour  they  remain. 
Occasionally  one  will  rise,  in  obedience  to 
some  call  or  revelation  incomprehensible  to 
us,  and  move  out  through  the  door  into  the 
clang  and  confusion  of  Broadway. 

It  all  confirms  the  impression  that  grows 
on  the  visitor  to  America  that  Business  has 
developed  insensibly  into  a  Religion,  in  more 
than  the  light,  metaphorical  sense  of  the 
words.  It  has  its  ritual  and  theology,  its  high 
places  and  its  jargon,  as  well  as  its  priests  and 
martyrs.  One  of  its  more  mystical  mani 
festations  is  in  advertisement.  America  has 
a  childlike  faith  in  advertising.  They  adver 
tise  here,  everywhere,  and  in  all  ways.  They 
shout  your  most  private  and  sacred  wants  at 
you.  Nothing  is  untouched.  Every  day  I 


NEW  YORK  27 

pass  a  wall,  some  five  hundred  square  feet  of 
which  a  gentleman  has  taken  to  declare  that 
he  is  'out'  to  break  the  Undertakers'  Trust. 
Half  the  advertisement  is  a  coloured  photo 
graph  of  himself.  The  rest  is,  "See  what  I 
give  you  for  75  dols. !"  and  a  list  of  what 
he  does  give.  He  gives  everything  that 
the  most  morbid  taphologist  could  suggest, 
beginning  with  "splendidly  carved  full-size 
oak  casket,  with  black  ivory  handles.  Four 
draped  Flambeaux  ..."  and  going  on  to 
funereal  ingenuities  that  would  have  over 
whelmed  Mausolus,  and  make  death  impos 
sible  for  a  refined  man. 

But  there  are  heights  as  well  as  depths. 
I  have  been  privileged  with  some  intimate 
glances  into  the  greatest  of  those  peculiarly 
American  institutions,  the  big  departmental 
stores.  Materially  it  is  an  immense  building, 
containing  all  things  that  any  upper-middle- 
class  person  could  conceivably  want.  Such  a 
store  includes  even  Art,  with  the  same  bland 
omnipotence.  If  you  wander  into  the  vast 
auditorium,  it  is  equal  chances  whether  you 
hear  a  work  of  Beethoven,  Victor  Herbert, 
Schonberg,  or  Mr  Hirsch.  If  you  are  'artistic,' 
you  may  choose  between  a  large  coloured 
photograph  of  the  Eiffel  Tower,  a  carbon 


28        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

print  of  Botticelli,  and  a  reproduction  of  an 
'improvisation'  by  Herr  Kandinsky.  You 
may  buy  an  Elizabethan  dining-table,  a 
Grseco-Roman  bronze,  the  latest  dress  de 
signed  by  M.  Bakst,  or  a  packet  of  pins.  Or 
you  may  sit  and  muse  on  the  life  of  the 
employee  of  this  place,  who  gets  from  it 
all  that  in  less  favoured  civilisations  family, 
guild,  club,  township,  and  nationality  have 
given  him  or  her.  As  a  child  he  gets 
education,  then  evening-classes,  continuation- 
schools,  gymnasia,  military  training,  swim 
ming-baths,  orchestra,  facilities  for  the  study 
of  anything  under  the  sun,  from  palaeography 
to  Cherokee,  libraries,  holiday-camps,  hospitals, 
ever-present  medical  attendance,  and  at  the 
end  a  pension,  and,  I  suppose,  a  store  cemetery. 
And  all  for  the  price  of  a  few  hours'  work  a 
day,  and  a  little  loyalty  to  the  'establishment.' 
Can  human  hearts  desire  more?  And,  when 
all  millionaires  are  as  sensible,  will  they? 
In  industries  and  businesses  like  this,  where 
the  majority  of  the  employed  are  women,  it 
ought  to  be  a  pretty  stable  sort  of  millennium. 
Men,  perhaps,  take  longer  to  learn  that  kind 
of  'loyalty.' 

In  one  corner  of  this  store  is  the  advertis 
ing  department.     There  are  gathered  poets, 


NEW  YORK  29 

artists,  litterateurs,  and  mere  intellectuals,  all 
engaged  in  explaining  to  the  upper  middle- 
classes  what  there  is  for  them  to  buy  and  why 
they  should  buy  it.  It  is  a  life  of  good  salary, 
steady  hours,  sufficient  leisure,  and  entire 
dignity.  There  is  no  vulgarity  in  this  advertis 
ing,  but  the  most  perfect  taste  and  great 
artistic  daring  and  novelty.  The  most  'ad 
vanced'  productions  of  Europe  are  scanned 
for  ideas  and  suggestions.  Two  of  the  leading 
young  'post-impressionist'  painters  in  Paris, 
whose  names  are  just  beginning  to  be  known 
in  England,  have  been  designing  posters  for 
this  store  for  years.  I  stood  and  watched 
with  awe  a  young  American  genius  doing 
entirely  Matisse-like  illustrations  to  some 
notes  on  summer  suitings.  "We  give  our 
artists  a  free  hand,"  said  the  very  intelligent 
lady  in  charge  of  that  section;  "except,  of 
course,  for  nudes  or  improprieties.  And  we 
don't  allow  any  figures  of  people  smoking. 
Some  of  our  customers  object  very  strongly.  .  ." 
Cities,  like  cats,  will  reveal  themselves  at 
night.  There  comes  an  hour  of  evening  when 
lower  Broadway,  the  business  end  of  the 
town,  is  deserted.  And  if,  having  felt  your 
self  immersed  in  men  and  the  frenzy  of  cities 
all  day,  you  stand  out  in  the  street  in  this 


30        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

sudden  hush,  you  will  hear,  like  a  strange 
questioning  voice  from  another  world,  the 
melancholy  boom  of  a  foghorn,  and  realise 
that  not  half  a  mile  away  are  the  waters  of 
the  sea,  and  some  great  liner  making  its  slow 
way  out  to  the  Atlantic.  After  that,  the 
lights  come  out  up-town,  and  the  New  York 
of  theatres  and  vaudevilles  and  restaurants 
begins  to  roar  and  flare.  The  merciless  lights 
throw  a  mask  of  unradiant  glare  on  the 
human  beings  in  the  streets,  making  each 
face  hard,  set,  wolfish,  terribly  blue.  The 
chorus  of  voices  becomes  shriller.  The  build 
ings  tower  away  into  obscurity,  looking 
strangely  theatrical,  because  lit  from  below. 
And  beyond  them  soars  the  purple  roof  of 
the  night.  A  stranger  of  another  race,  loiter 
ing  here,  might  cast  his  eyes  up,  in  a  vague 
wonder  what  powers,  kind  or  maleficent,  con 
trolled  or  observed  this  whirlpool.  He  would 
find  only  this  unresponsive  canopy  of  black, 
unpierced  even,  if  the  seeker  stood  near  a 
centre  of  lights,  by  any  star.  But  while  he 
looks,  away  up  in  the  sky,  out  of  the  gulfs  of 
night,  spring  two  vast  fiery  tooth-brushes, 
erect,  leaning  towards  each  other,  and  hanging 
on  to  the  bristles  of  them  a  little  Devil,  little 
but  gigantic,  who  kicks  and  wriggles  and 


NEW  YORK  31 

glares.  After  a  few  moments  the  Devil, 
baffled  by  the  firmness  of  the  bristles,  stops, 
hangs  still,  rolls  his  eyes,  moon-large,  and,  in 
a  fury  of  disappointment,  goes  out,  leaving 
only  the  night,  blacker  and  a  little  bewildered, 
and  the  unconscious  throngs  of  ant-like  human 
beings.  Turning  with  terrified  relief  from 
this  exhibition  of  diabolic  impotence,  the 
stranger  finds  a  divine  hand  writing  slowly 
across  the  opposite  quarter  of  the  heavens 
its  igneous  message  of  warning  to  the  nations, 
"Wear Underwear  for  Youths  and  Men- 
Boys."  And  close  by  this  message  come  forth 
a  youth  and  a  man-boy,  flaming  and  immortal, 
clad  in  celestial  underwear,  box  a  short 
round,  vanish,  reappear  for  another  round, 
and  again  disappear.  Night  after  night  they 
wage  this  combat.  What  gods  they  are  who 
fight  endlessly  and  indecisively  over  New 
York  is  not  for  our  knowledge;  whether  it 
be  Thor  and  Odin,  or  Zeus  and  Cronos,  or 
Michael  and  Lucifer,  or  Ormuzd  and  Ahri- 
man,  or  Good-as-a-means  and  Good-as-an-end. 
The  ways  of  our  lords  were  ever  riddling  and 
obscure.  To  the  right  a  celestial  bottle, 
stretching  from  the  horizon  to  the  zenith, 
appears,  is  uncorked,  and  scatters  the  worlds 
with  the  foam  of  what  ambrosial  liquor  may 


32        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

have  been  within.  Beyond,  a  Spanish  goddess, 
some  minor  deity  in  the  Dionysian  theogony, 
dances  continually,  rapt  and  mysterious,  to 
the  music  of  the  spheres,  her  head  in  Cassiopeia 
and  her  twinkling  feet  among  the  Pleiades. 
And  near  her,  Orion,  archer  no  longer,  releases 
himself  from  his  strained  posture  to  drive  a 
sidereal  golf-ball  out  of  sight  through  the 
meadows  of  Paradise;  then  poses,  addresses, 
and  drives  again. 

"O  Nineveh,  are  these  thy  gods, 
Thine  also,  mighty  Nineveh?" 

Why  this  theophany,  or  how  the  gods  have 
got  out  to  perform  their  various  "stunts'  on 
the  flammantia  mania  mundi,  is  not  asked  by 
their  incurious  devotees.  Through  Broad 
way  the  dingily  glittering  tide  spreads  itself 
over  the  sands  of  " amusement.'  Theatres 
and  "movies'  are  aglare.  Cars  shriek  down 
the  street;  the  Elevated  train  clangs  and 
curves  perilously  overhead;  newsboys  wail 
the  baseball  news;  wits  cry  their  obscure 
challenges  to  one  another,  "I  should  worry!' 
or  "She's  some  Daisy!'  or  "Good-night, 
Nurse ! '  In  houses  off  the  streets  around 
children  are  being  born,  lovers  are  kissing, 
people  are  dying.  Above,  in  the  midst  of 


NEW  YORK  33 

those  coruscating  divinities,  sits  one  older  and 
greater  than  any.  Most  colossal  of  all,  it 
flashes  momently  out,  a  woman's  head,  all 
flame  against  the  darkness.  It  is  beautiful, 
passionless,  in  its  simplicity  and  conventional 
representation  queerly  like  an  archaic  Greek 
or  early  Egyptian  figure.  Queen  of  the  night 
behind,  and  of  the  gods  around,  and  of  the 
city  below — here,  if  at  all,  you  think,  may 
one  find  the  answer  to  the  riddle.  Her 
ostensible  message,  burning  in  the  firmament 
beside  her,  is  that  we  should  buy  pepsin 
chewing-gum.  But  there  is  more,  not  to  be 
given  in  words,  ineffable.  Suddenly,  when 
she  has  surveyed  mankind,  she  closes  her 
left  eye.  Three  times  she  winks,  and  then 
vanishes.  No  ordinary  winks  these,  but  por 
tentous,  terrifyingly  steady,  obliterating  a 
great  tract  of  the  sky.  Hour  by  hour  she 
does  this,  night  by  night,  year  by  year.  That 
enigmatic  obscuration  of  light,  that  answer 
that  is  no  answer,  is,  perhaps,  the  first  thing 
in  this  world  that  a  child  born  near  here  will 
see,  and  the  last  that  a  dying  man  will  have 
to  take  for  a  message  to  the  curious  dead. 
She  is  immortal.  Men  have  worshipped  her 
as  Isis  and  as  Ashtaroth,  as  Venus,  as  Cybele, 
Mother  of  the  Gods,  and  as  Mary.  There  is 


34        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

a  statue  of  her  by  the  steps  of  the  British 
Museum.  Here,  above  the  fantastic  civilisa 
tion  she  observes,  she  has  no  name.  She  is 
older  than  the  sky-scrapers  amongst  which 
she  sits;  and  one,  certainly,  of  her  eyelids  is 
a  trifle  weary.  And  the  only  answer  to  our 
cries,  the  only  comment  upon  our  cities,  is 
that  divine  stare,  the  wink,  once,  twice,  thrice. 
And  then  darkness. 


IV 
BOSTON  AND  HARVARD 


IV 
BOSTON  AND  HARVARD 

IT  is  right  to  leave  Boston  late  in  a  summer 
afternoon,  and  by  sea.  Naval  departure  is 
always  the  better.  A  train  snatches  you, 
hot,  dusty,  and  smoky,  with  an  irritated 
hurry  out  of  the  back  parts  of  a  town.  The 
last  glimpse  of  a  place  you  may  have  grown 
to  like  or  love  is,  ignobly,  interminable  rows 
of  the  bedroom-windows  in  mean  streets,  a 
few  hovels,  some  cinder-heaps,  and  a  factory 
chimney.  As  like  as  not,  you  are  reft  from 
a  last  wave  to  the  city's  unresponsive  and 
dingy  back  by  the  roar  and  suffocation  of  a 
tunnel.  By  sea  one  takes  a  gracefuller,  more 
satisfactory  farewell. 

Boston  puts  on  her  best  appearance  to 
watch  our  boat  go  out  for  New  York.  The 
harbour  was  bright  with  sunlight  and  blue 
water  and  little  white  sails  and  there  wasn't 
more  than  the  faintest  smell  of  tea.  The 
city  sat  primly  on  her  little  hills,  decorous, 
civilised,  European-looking.  It  is  homely  after 

37 


38        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

New  York.  The  Boston  crowd  is  curiously 
English.  They  have  nice  eighteenth-century 
houses  there,  and  ivy  grows  on  the  buildings. 
And  they  are  hospitable.  All  Americans  are 
hospitable;  but  they  haven't  quite  time  in 
New  York  to  practise  the  art  so  perfectly  as 
the  Bostonians.  It  is  a  lovely  art.  ...  But 
Boston  also  makes  you  feel  at  home  without 
meaning  to.  A  delicious  ancient  Toryism  is 
to  be  found  here.  "What  is  wrong  with 
America,"  a  middle-aged  lady  told  me,  "is 
this  Democracy.  They  ought  to  take  the 
votes  away  from  these  people,  who  don't 
know  how  to  use  them,  and  give  them  only 
to  us,  the  Educated."  My  heart  leapt  the 
Atlantic,  and  was  in  a  Cathedral  or  University 
town  of  South  England. 

Yet  Boston  is  alive.  It  sits,  in  comfortable 
middle-age,  on  the  ruins  of  its  glory.  But  it 
is  not  buried  beneath  them.  It  used  to  lead 
America  in  Literature,  Thought,  Art,  every 
thing.  The  years  have  passed.  It  is  re 
markable  how  nearly  now  Boston  is  to  New 
York  what  Munich  is  to  Berlin.  Boston  and 
Munich  were  the  leaders  forty  years  ago. 
They  can't  quite  make  out  that  they  aren't 
now.  It  is  too  incredible  that  Art  should 
leave  her  goose-feather  bed  and  away  to  the 


BOSTON  AND  HARVARD          39 

wraggle-taggle  business-men.  And  certainly, 
if  Berlin  and  New  York  are  more  'live/ 
Boston  and  Munich  are  more  themselves,  less 
feverishly  imitations  of  Paris.  But  the  un 
disputed  palm  is  there  no  more;  and  its 
absence  is  felt. 

But  I  had  little  time  to  taste  Boston  itself. 
I  was  lured  across  the  river  to  a  place  called 
Cambridge,  where  is  the  University  of  Harvard. 
Harvard  is  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  of 
America,  they  claim.  She  has  moulded  the 
nation's  leaders  and  uttered  its  ideals.  Har 
vard,  Boston,  New  England,  it  is  impossible  to 
say  how  much  they  are  interwoven,  and  how 
they  have  influenced  America.  I  saw  Harvard 
in  'Commencement,'  which  is  Eights  Week 
and  May  Week,  the  festive  winding-up  of  the 
year,  a  time  of  parties  and  of  valedictions. 
One  of  the  great  events  of  Commencement, 
and  of  the  year,  is  the  Harvard-Yale  baseball 
match.  To  this  I  went,  excited  at  the  pros 
pect  of  my  first  sight  of  a  'ball  game,'  and 
my  mind  vaguely  reminiscent  of  the  indolent, 
decorous,  upper-class  crowd,  the  sunlit  spaces, 
the  dignified  ritual,  and  white-flannelled  grace 
of  Lord's  at  the  'Varsity  cricket  match.  The 
crowd  was  gay,  and  not  very  large.  We  sat 
in  wooden  stands,  which  were  placed  in  the 


40        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

shape  of  a  large  V.  As  all  the  hitting  which 
counts  in  baseball  takes  place  well  in  front 
of  the  wicket,  so  to  speak,  the  spectators  have 
the  game  right  under  their  noses;  the  striker 
stands  in  the  angle  of  the  V  and  plays  out 
wards.  The  field  was  a  vast  place,  partly 
stubbly  grass,  partly  worn  and  patchy,  like  a 
parade-ground.  Beyond  it  lay  the  river; 
beyond  that  the  town  of  Cambridge  and  the 
University  buildings.  Around  me  were  under 
graduates,  with  their  mothers  and  sisters. 
6  Cambridge ' !  .  .  .  but  there  entered  to  us, 
across  the  field,  a  troop  of  several  hundred 
men,  all  dressed  in  striped  shirts  of  the  same 
hue  and  pattern,  and  headed  by  a  vast  banner 
which  informed  the  world  that  they  were  the 
graduates  of  1910,  celebrating  their  triennial. 
In  military  formation  they  moved  across  the 
plain  towards  us,  led  by  a  band,  ceaselessly 
vociferating,  and  raising  their  straw  hats  in 
unison  to  mark  the  time.  There  followed  the 
class  of  1907,  attired  as  sailors;  1903,  the 
decennial  class,  with  some  samples  of  their 
male  children  marching  with  them,  and  a 
banner  inscribed  "515  Others.  No  Race 
Suicide";  1898,  carefully  arranged  in  an 
H-shaped  formation,  dancing  along  to  their 
music  with  a  slow  polka-step,  each  with  his 


BOSTON  AND  HARVARD          41 

hands  on  the  shoulders  of  the  man  in  front, 
and  at  the  head  of  all  their  leader,  dancing 
backwards  in  perfect  time,  marshalling  them; 
1888,  middle-aged  men,  again  with  some 
children,  and  a  Highland  regiment  playing 
the  bagpipes. 

When  these  had  passed  to  the  seats  allotted 
for  them,  I  had  time  to  observe  the  players, 
who  were  practising  about  the  ground,  and  I 
was  shocked.  They  wear  dust-coloured  shirts 
and  dingy  knickerbockers,  fastened  under  the 
knee,  and  heavy  boots.  They  strike  the 
English  eye  as  being  attired  for  football,  or 
a  gladiatorial  combat,  rather  than  a  summer 
game.  The  very  close-fitting  caps,  with  large 
peaks,  give  them  picturesquely  the  appearance 
of  hooligans.  Baseball  is  a  good  game  to 
watch,  and  in  outline  easy  to  understand,  as 
it  is  merely  glorified  rounders.  A  cricketer  is 
fascinated  by  their  rapidity  and  skill  in  catch 
ing  and  throwing.  There  is  excitement  in 
the  game,  but  little  beauty  except  in  the 
long-limbed  'pitcher,'  whose  duty  it  is  to 
hurl  the  ball  rather  further  than  the  length 
of  a  cricket-pitch,  as  bewilderingly  as  possible. 
In  his  efforts  to  combine  speed,  mystery, 
and  curve,  he  gets  into  attitudes  of  a  very 
novel  and  fantastic,  but  quite  obvious, 


42        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

beauty.     M.  Nijinsky  would  find  them  repay 
study. 

One  queer  feature  of  this  sport  is  that  un 
occupied  members  of  the  batting  side,  fielders, 
and  even  spectators,  are  accustomed  to  join  in 
vocally.  You  have  the  spectacle  of  the  rep 
resentatives  of  the  universities  endeavouring 
to  frustrate  or  unnerve  their  opponents,  at 
moments  of  excitement,  by  cries  of  derision 
and  mockery,  or  heartening  their  own  sup 
porters  and  performers  with  exclamations  of 
'Now,  Joe!'  or  'He's  got  them!'  or  'He's 
the  boy ! '  At  the  crises  in  the  fortunes  of 
the  game,  the  spectators  take  a  collective 
and  important  part.  The  Athletic  Committee 
appoints  a  'cheer-leader'  for  the  occasion. 
Every  five  or  ten  minutes  this  gentleman,  a 
big,  fine  figure  in  white,  springs  out  from  his 
seat  at  the  foot  of  the  stands,  addresses 
the  multitude  through  a  megaphone  with  a 
'One  !  Two  !  Three  !'  hurls  it  aside,  and,  with 
a  wild  flinging  and  swinging  of  his  body  and 
arms,  conducts  ten  thousand  voices  in  the 
Harvard  yell.  That  over,  the  game  proceeds, 
and  the  cheer-leader  sits  quietly  waiting  for 
the  next  moment  of  peril  or  triumph.  I  shall 
not  easily  forget  that  figure,  bright  in  the 
sunshine,  conducting  with  his  whole  body, 


BOSTON  AND   HARVARD          43 

passionate,  possessed  by  a  demon,  bounding 
in  the  frenzy  of  his  inspiration  from  side  to 
side,  contorted,  rhythmic,  ecstatic.  It  seemed 
so  wonderfully  American,  in  its  combination 
of  entire  wildness  and  entire  regulation,  with 
the  whole  just  a  trifle  fantastic.  Completely 
friendly  and  befriended  as  I  was,  I  couldn't 
help  feeling  at  those  moments  very  alien  and 
very,  very  old — even  more  so  than  after  the 
protracted  game  had  ended  in  a  victory  for 
Harvard,  when  the  dusty  plain  was  filled  with 
groups  and  lines  of  men  dancing  in  solemn 
harmony,  and  a  shouting  crowd,  broken  by 
occasional  individuals  who  could  find  some 
little  eminence  to  lead  a  Harvard  yell  from, 
and  who  conducted  the  bystanders,  and  then 
vanished,  and  the  crowd  swirled  on  again. 

Different  enough  was  the  scene  next  day, 
when  all  Harvard  men  who  were  up  for  Com 
mencement  assembled  and,  arranged  by  years, 
marched  round  the  yard.  Class  by  class  they 
paraded,  beginning  with  veterans  of  the 
'fifties,  down  to  the  class  of  1912.  I  wonder 
if  English  nerves  could  stand  it.  It  seems 
to  bring  the  passage  of  time  so  very  presently 
and  vividly  to  the  mind.  To  see,  with  such 
emphatic  regularity,  one's  coevals  changing 
in  figure,  and  diminishing  in  number,  summer 


44        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

after  summer!  .  .  .  Perhaps  it  is  nobler, 
this  deliberate  viewing  of  oneself  as  part  of 
the  stream.  To  the  spectator,  certainly,  the 
flow  and  transiency  become  apparent  and 
poignant.  In  five  minutes  fifty  years  of 
America,  of  so  much  of  America,  go  past  one. 
The  shape  of  the  bodies,  apart  from  the 
effects  of  age,  the  lines  of  the  faces,  the  ways 
of  wearing  hair  and  beard  and  moustaches,  all 
these  change  a  little  decade  by  decade,  before 
your  eyes.  And  through  the  whole  appear 
ance  runs  some  continuity,  which  is  Harvard. 
The  orderly  progression  of  the  years  was 
unbroken,  except  at  one  point.  There  was 
one  gap,  large  and  arresting.  Though  all 
years  were  represented,  there  seemed  to  be 
nobody  in  the  procession  between  fifty  and 
sixty.  I  asked  a  Harvard  friend  the  reason. 
"The  War,"  he  said.  He  told  me  there  had 
always  been  that  gap.  Those  who  were  old 
enough  to  be  conscious  of  the  war  had  lost 
a  big  piece  of  their  lives.  With  their  suc 
cessors  a  new  America  began.  I  don't  know 
how  true  it  is.  Certainly,  the  dates  worked  out 
right.  And  I  met  an  American  on  a  boat  who 
had  been  a  child  in  one  of  the  neutral  States. 
He  used  to  watch  the  regiments  forming  in  the 
main  street  of  his  town,  and  marching  out,  some 


BOSTON  AND   HARVARD          45 

north  and  some  south.  He  said  it  felt  as  though 
pieces  of  his  body  were  being  torn  in  different 
directions.  And  he  was  only  nine. 

The  procession  filed  in  to  an  open  court,  to 
hear  the  speeches  of  the  recipients  of  honorary 
degrees,  and  the  President's  annual  statement. 
There  was  still,  in  every  sense,  a  solemn 
atmosphere.  The  President's  speech  floated 
out  into  the  great  open  space;  fragments  of  it 
were  blown  to  one's  ears  concerning  deaths,  and 
the  spirit  of  the  place,  and  a  detailed  account 
of  the  money  given  during  the  year.  Eleven 
hundred  thousand  dollars  in  all — a  record, 
or  nearly  a  record.  We  roared  applause.  The 
American  universities  appear  still  to  dream  of 
the  things  of  this  world.  They  keep  putting  up 
the  most  wonderful  and  expensive  buildings. 
But  they  do  not  pay  their  teachers  well. 

Yet  Harvard  is  a  spirit,  a  way  of  looking  at 
things,  austerely  refined,  gently  moral,  kindly. 
The  perception  of  it  grows  on  the  foreigner. 
Its  charm  is  so  deliciously  old  in  this  land,  so 
deliciously  young  compared  with  the  lovely 
frowst  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  You  see  it 
in  temperament,  the  charm  of  simplicity  and 
good-heartedness  and  culture;  in  the  Harvard 
undergraduate,  who  is  a  boy,  while  his  English 
contemporary  is  either  a  young  man  or  a 


46        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

schoolboy,  less  pleasant  stages;  and  in  the 
old  Bostonian  who  heard,  and  still  hears, 
the  lectures  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray.  Class 
Day  brings  so  many  of  that  older  generation 
together.  They  reveal  what  Harvard,  what 
Boston,  was.  There  is  something  terrifying 
in  the  completeness  of  their  lives  and  their 
civilisation.  They  are  like  a  company  of  dons 
whose  studies  are  of  a  remote  and  finished 
world.  But  the  subject  of  their  scholarship 
is  the  Victorian  age,  and  especially  Victorian 
England.  Hence  their  liveliness  and  certainty, 
greater  than  men  can  reach  who  are  concerned 
with  the  dubieties  and  changes  of  incomplete 
things.  Hence  the  wit,  the  stock  of  excellent 
stories,  the  wrinkled  wisdom  and  mirth  of  the 
type.  They  are  the  flower  of  a  civilisation, 
its  ripest  critics,  and  final  judges.  Carlyle 
and  Emerson  are  their  greatest  living  heroes. 
One  of  them  bent  the  kindliness  and  alert 
interest  of  his  eighty  years  upon  me.  "So 
you  come  from  Rugby,"  he  said.  "Tell  me, 
do  you  know  that  curious  creature,  Matthew 
Arnold?"  I  couldn't  bring  myself  to  tell 
him  that,  even  in  Rugby,  we  had  forgiven 
that  brilliant  youth  his  iconoclastic  tendencies 
some  time  since,  and  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  had  died  when  I  was  eight  months  old. 


V 
MONTREAL  AND  OTTAWA 


V 
MONTREAL  AND  OTTAWA 

MY  American  friends  were  full  of  kindly 
scorn  when  I  announced  that  I  was  going  to 
Canada.  'A  country  without  a  soul!'  they 
cried,  and  pressed  books  upon  me,  to  befriend 
me  through  that  Philistine  bleakness.  Their 
commiseration  unnerved  me,  but  I  was 
heartened  by  a  feeling  that  I  was,  in  a  sense, 
going  home,  and  by  the  romance  of  journeying. 
There  was  romance  in  the  long  grim  American 
train,  in  the  great  lake  we  passed  in  the 
blackest  of  nights,  and  could  just  see  glinting 
behind  dark  trees;  in  the  negro  car-attendant; 
in  the  boy  who  perpetually  cried:  'Pea-nuts! 
Candy!'  up  and  down  the  long  carriages; 
in  the  lofty  box  they  put  me  in  to  sleep;  and 
in  the  fat  old  lady  who  had  the  berth  under 
mine,  and  snored  shrilly  the  whole  night 
through.  There  was  almost  romance,  even,  in 
the  fact  that  after  all  there  was  no  restaurant- 
car  on  the  train;  and,  having  walked  all  day 
in  the  country,  I  dined  off  an  orange. 


50        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

I  suppose  an  Englishman  in  another  country, 
if  he  is  simple  enough,  is  continually  and  alter 
nately  struck  by  two  thoughts:  'How  like 
England  this  is!'  and  'How  unlike  England 
this  is ! '  When  I  had  woken  next  morning, 
and,  lying  on  my  back,  had  got  inside  my 
clothes  with  a  series  of  fish-like  jumps,  I  found 
myself  looking  with  startled  eyes  out  of  the 
window  at  the  largest  river  I  had  ever  seen. 
It  was  blue,  and  sunlit,  and  it  curved  spa 
ciously.  But  beyond  that  we  ran  into  the 
squalider  parts  of  a  city.  It  became  immedi 
ately  obvious  that  we  were  not  in  New  York 
or  Boston  or  any  of  the  more  orderly,  the 
rather  foreign,  cities  of  America.  There  was 
something  in  the  untidiness  of  those  grimy 
houses,  the  smoky  disorder  of  the  backyards, 
that  ran  a  thrill  of  nostalgia  through  me.  I  rec 
ognised  the  English  way  of  doing  things — with 
a  difference  that  I  could  not  define  till  later. 

Determined  to  be  in  all  ways  the  complete 
tourist,  I  took  a  rough  preliminary  survey  of 
Montreal  in  an  'observation-car.'  It  was  a 
large  motor-wagonette,  from  which  every 
thing  in  Montreal  could  be  seen  in  two  hours. 
We  were  a  most  fortuitous  band  of  twenty, 
who  had  elected  so  to  see  it.  Our  guide 
addressed  us  from  the  front  through  a  small 


MONTREAL  AND  OTTAWA        51 

megaphone,  telling  us  what  everything  was, 
what  we  were  to  be  interested  in,  what  to 
overlook,  what  to  admire.  He  seemed  the 
exact  type  of  a  spiritual  pastor  and  master, 
shepherding  his  stolid  and  perplexed  flock 
on  a  regulated  path  through  the  dust  and 
clatter  of  the  world.  And  the  great  hollow 
device  out  of  which  our  instruction  proceeded 
was  so  perfectly  a  blind  mouth.  I  had  never 
understood  Lycidas  before.  We  were  sheepish 
enough,  and  fairly  hungry.  However,  we  were 
excellently  fed.  "On  the  right,  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  is  the  Bank  of  Montreal;  on  the 
left  the  Presbyterian  Church  of  St  Andrew's; 
on  the  right,  again,  the  well-designed  residence 
of  Sir  Blank  Blank;  further  on,  on  the  same 
side,  the  Art  Museum.  .  .  ."  The  outcome 
of  it  all  was  a  vague  general  impression  that 
Montreal  consists  of  banks  and  churches. 
The  people  of  this  city  spend  much  of  their 
time  in  laying  up  their  riches  in  this  world  or 
the  next.  Indeed,  the  British  part  of  Montreal 
is  dominated  by  the  Scotch  race;  there  is  a 
Scotch  spirit  sensible  in  the  whole  place.  The 
rather  narrow,  rather  gloomy  streets,  the  solid, 
square,  grey,  aggressively  prosperous  build 
ings,  the  general  greyness  of  the  city,  the  air 
of  dour  prosperity.  Even  the  Canadian  habit 


52        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

of  loading  the  streets  with  heavy  telephone 
wires,  supported  by  frequent  black  poles, 
seemed  to  increase  the  atmospheric  resem 
blance  to  Glasgow. 

But  besides  all  this  there  is  a  kind  of  re 
straint  in  the  air,  due,  perhaps^to  a  state  of 
affairs  which,  more  than  any  other,  startles 
the  ordinary  ignorant  English  visitor.  The 
average  man  in  England  has  an  idea  of  Canada 
as  a  young-eyed  daughter  State,  composed  of 
millions  of  wheat-growers  and  backwoodsmen 
of  British  race.  It  surprises  him  to  learn 
that  more  than  a  quarter  of  the  population 
is  of  French  descent,  that  many  of  them 
cannot  speak  English,  that  they  control  a 
province,  form  the  majority  in  the  biggest 
city  in  Canada,  and  are  a  perpetual  complica 
tion  in  the  national  politics.  Even  a  stranger 
who  knows  this  is  startled  at  the  complete 
separateness  of  the  two  races.  Inter-marriage 
is  very  rare.  They  do  not  meet  socially; 
only  on  business,  and  that  not  often.  In  the 
same  city  these  two  communities  dwell  side 
by  side,  with  different  traditions,  different 
languages,  different  ideals,  without  sympathy 
or  comprehension.  The  French  in  Canada 
are  entirely  devoted  to — some  say  under  the 
thumb  of — the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  .  They 


MONTREAL  AND   OTTAWA        53 

seem  like  a  piece  of  the  Middle  Ages,  dumped 
after  a  trans-secular  journey  into  a  quite 
uncompromising  example  of  our  commercial 
time.  Some  of  their  leaders  are  said  to  have 
dreams  of  a  French  Republic — or  theocracy — 
on  the  banks  of  the  St  Lawrence.  How  this, 
or  any  other,  solution  of  the  problem  is  to 
come  about,  no  man  knows.  Racial  diffi 
culties  are  the  most  enduring  of  all.  The 
French  and  British  in  Canada  seem  to  have 
behaved  with  quite  extraordinary  generosity 
and  kindliness  towards  each  other.  No  one 
is  to  blame.  But  it  is  not  in  human  nature 
that  two  communities  should  live  side  by  side, 
pretending  they  are  one,  without  some  irrita 
tion  and  mutual  loss  of  strength.  There  is 
no  open  strife.  But  'incidents,'  and  the 
memory  of  incidents,  bear  continual  witness 
to  the  truth  of  the  situation.  And  racial 
disagreement  is  at  the  bottom,  often  uncon 
sciously,  of  many  political  and  social  move 
ments.  Sir  Wilfrid  Laurier  performed  a 
miracle.  But  no  one  of  French  birth  will  ever 
again  be  Premier  of  Canada. 

Montreal  and  Eastern  Canada  suffer  from 
that  kind  of  ill-health  which  afflicts  men  who 
are  cases  of  'double  personality' — debility 
and  spiritual  paralysis.  The  'progressive' 


54        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

British-Canadian  man  of  commerce  is  comic 
ally  desperate  of  peasants  who  will  not  under 
stand  that  increase  of  imports  and  volume  of 
trade  and  numbers  of  millionaires  are  the 
measures  of  a  city's  greatness;  and  to  his  eye 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  with  her  invalu 
able  ally  Ignorance,  keeps  up  her  incessant 
war  against  the  general  good  of  the  community 
of  which  she  is  part.  So  things  remain. 

I  made  my  investigations  in  Montreal.  I 
have  to  report  that  the  Discobolus1  is  very 
well,  and,  nowadays,  looks  the  whole  world 
in  the  face,  almost  quite  unabashed.  West 
of  Montreal,  the  country  seems  to  take  on 
a  rather  more  English  appearance.  There 
is  still  a  French  admixture.  But  the  little 
houses  are  not  purely  Gallic,  as  they  are  along 
the  Lower  St  Lawrence;  and  once  or  twice  I 
detected  real  hedges. 

Ottawa  came  as  a  relief  after  Montreal. 
There  is  no  such  sense  of  strain  and  tightness 
in  the  atmosphere.  The  British,  if  not  greatly 
in  the  majority,  are  in  the  ascendency;  also, 
the  city  seems  conscious  of  other  than  financial 
standards,  and  quietly,  with  dignity,  aware 
of  her  own  purpose.  The  Canadians,  like  the 
Americans,  chose  to  have  for  their  capital  a 

^ee  Samuel  Butler's  poem,  "Oh  God !  oh  Montreal !"— ED. 


MONTREAL  AND  OTTAWA        55 

city  which  did  not  lead  in  population  or  in 
wealth.  This  is  particularly  fortunate  in 
Canada,  an  extremely  individualistic  country, 
whose  inhabitants  are  only  just  beginning  to 
be  faintly  conscious  of  their  nationality.  Here, 
at  least,  Canada  is  more  than  the  Canadian. 
A  man  desiring  to  praise  Ottawa  would  begin 
to  do  so  without  statistics  of  wealth  and  the 
growth  of  population;  and  this  can  be  said 
of  no  other  city  in  Canada  except  Quebec. 
Not  that  there  are  not  immense  lumber-mills 
and  the  rest  in  Ottawa.  But  the  Govern 
ment  farm,  and  the  Parliament  buildings,  are 
more  important.  Also,  although  the  'spoils' 
system  obtains  a  good  deal  in  this  country, 
the  nucleus  of  the  Civil  Service  is  much  the 
same  as  in  England;  so  there  is  an  atmosphere 
of  Civil  Servants  about  Ottawa,  an  atmosphere 
of  safeness  and  honour  and  massive  buildings 
and  well-shaded  walks.  After  all,  there  is  in 
the  qualities  of  Civility  and  Service  much 
beauty,  of  a  kind  which  would  adorn  Canada. 
Parliament  Buildings  stand  finely  on  a  head 
land  of  cliff  some  160  feet  above  the  river. 
There  are  gardens  about  them;  and  beneath, 
the  wooded  rocks  go  steeply  down  to  the 
water.  It  is  a  position  of  natural  boldness 
and  significance.  The  buildings  were  put  up 


56        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

in  the  middle  of  last  century,  an  unfortunate 
period.  But  they  have  dignity,  especially 
of  line;  and  when  evening  hides  their  colour, 
and  the  western  sky  and  the  river  take  on 
the  lovely  hues  of  a  Canadian  sunset,  and  the 
lights  begin  to  come  out  in  the  city,  they  seem 
to  have  the  majesty  and  calm  of  a  natural 
crown  of  the  river-headland.  The  Govern 
ment  have  bought  the  ground  along  the  cliff 
for  half  a  mile  on  either  side,  and  propose  to 
build  all  their  offices  there.  So,  in  the  end, 
if  they  build  well,  the  river-front  at  Ottawa 
will  be  a  noble  sight.  And — just  to  show  that 
it  is  Canada,  and  not  Utopia — the  line  of 
national  buildings  will  always  be  broken  by 
an  expensive  and  superb  hotel  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway  has  been  allowed  to  erect  on 
the  twin  and  neighbouring  promontory  to 
that  of  the  Houses  of  Parliament. 

The  streets  of  Ottawa  are  very  quiet,  and 
shaded  with  trees.  The  houses  are  mostly 
of  that  cool,  homely,  wooden  kind,  with 
verandahs,  on  which,  or  on  the  steps,  the 
whole  family  may  sit  in  the  evening  and 
observe  the  passers-by.  This  is  possible  for 
both  the  rich  and  the  poor,  who  live  nearer 
each  other  in  Ottawa  than  in  most  cities.  In 
general  there  is  an  air  of  civilisation,  which 


MONTREAL  AND   OTTAWA        57 

extends  even  over  the  country  round.  But 
in  the  country  you  see  little  signs,  a  patch  of 
swamp,  or  thickets  of  still  untouched  primaeval 
wood,  which  remind  you  that  Europeans  have 
not  long  had  this  land.  I  was  taken  in  a 
motor-car  some  twenty  miles  or  more  over 
the  execrable  roads  round  here,  to  a  lovely 
little  lake  in  the  hills  north-west  of  Ottawa. 
We  went  by  little  French  villages  and  fields 
at  first,  and  then  through  rocky,  tangled  woods 
of  birch  and  poplar,  rich  with  milk-weed  and 
blue  cornflowers,  and  the  aromatic  thimble- 
berry  blossom,  and  that  romantic,  light, 
purple-red  flower  which  is  called  fireweed, 
because  it  is  the  first  vegetation  to  spring  up 
in  the  prairie  after  a  fire  has  passed  over,  and 
so  might  be  adopted  as  the  emblematic  flower 
of  a  sense  of  humour.  They  told  me,  casually, 
that  there  was  nothing  but  a  few  villages 
between  me  and  the  North  Pole.  It  is  probably 
true  of  several  commonly  frequented  places  in 
this  country.  But  it  gives  a  thrill  to  hear  it. 
But  what  Ottawa  leaves  in  the  mind  is  a 
certain  graciousness — dim,  for  it  expresses  a 
barely  materialised  national  spirit — and  the 
sight  of  kindly  English-looking  faces,  and  the 
rather  lovely  sound  of  the  soft  Canadian 
accent  in  the  streets. 


VI 
QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGTJENAY 


VI 
QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGUENAY 

THE  boat  starts  from  Montreal  one  evening, 
and  lands  you  in  Quebec  at  six  next  morning. 
The  evening  I  left  was  a  dull  one.  Heavy 
sulphurous  clouds  hung  low  over  the  city, 
drifting  very  slowly  and  gloomily  out  across 
the  river.  Mount  Royal  crouched,  black  and 
sullen,  in  the  background,  its  crest  occluded 
by  the  darkness,  appearing  itself  a  cloud 
materialised,  resting  on  earth.  The  harbour 
was  filled  with  volumes  of  smoke,  purple  and 
black,  wreathing  and  sidling  eastwards,  from 
steamers  and  chimneys.  The  gigantic  ele 
vators  and  other  harbour  buildings  stood 
mistily  in  this  inferno,  their  heads  clear  and 
sinister  above  the  mirk.  It  was  impossible  to 
decide  whether  an  enormous  mass  of  pitchy 
and  Tartarian  gloom  was  being  slowly  moulded 
by  diabolic  invisible  hands  into  a  city,  or  a 
city,  the  desperate  and  damned  abode  of  a 
loveless  race,  was  disintegrating  into  its  proper 
fume  and  dusty  chaos.  With  relief  we  turned 

61 


62        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

outwards  to  the  nobility  of  the  St  Lawrence 
and  the  gathering  dark. 

On  the  boat  I  fell  in  with  another  wanderer, 
an  American  Jew,  and  we  joined  our  fortunes, 
rather  loosely,  for  a  few  days.  He  was  one 
of  those  men  whom  it  is  a  life-long  pleasure 
to  remember.  I  can  record  his  existence  the 
more  easily  that  there  is  not  the  slightest 
chance  of  him  ever  reading  these  lines.  He 
was  a  fat,  large  man  of  forty-five,  obviously 
in  business  and  probably  of  a  mediocre  suc 
cess.  His  eyes  were  light-coloured,  very  small, 
always  watery,  and  perpetually  roving.  The 
lower  part  of  his  face  was  clean-shaven  and 
very  broad;  his  mouth  wide,  with  thin,  moist, 
colourless  lips;  his  nose  fat  and  Hebraic.  He 
was  rather  bald.  He  had  respect  for  Montreal, 
because,  though  closed  to  navigation  for  five 
months  in  the  year,  it  is  the  second  busiest 
port  on  the  coast.  He  said  it  had  Boston 
skinned.  The  French  he  disliked.  He  thought 
they  stood  in  the  way  of  Canada's  progress. 
His  mind  was  even  more  childlike  and  trans 
parent  than  is  usual  with  business  men.  The 
observer  could  see  thoughts  slowly  floating 
into  it,  like  carp  in  a  pond.  When  they  got 
near  the  surface,  by  a  purely  automatic  process 
they  found  utterance.  He  was  almost  com- 


QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGUENAY  63 

pletely  unconscious  of  an  audience.  Every 
thing  he  thought  of  he  said.  He  told  me  that 
his  boots  were  giving  in  the  sole,  but  would 
probably  last  this  trip.  He  said  he  had  not 
washed  his  feet  for  eight  days;  and  that  his 
clothes  were  shabby  (which  was  true),  but 
would  do  for  Canada.  It  was  interesting  to 
see  how  Canada  presented  herself  to  that 
mind.  He  seemed  to  regard  her  as  a  kind 
of  Boeotia,  and  terrifyingly  dour.  "These 
Canadian  waiters,"  he  said,  "they  jes'  fling 
the  food  in  y'r  face.  Kind'er  gets  yer  sick, 
doesn't  it?"  I  agreed.  There  was  a  York 
shire  mechanic,  too,  who  had  been  in  Canada 
four  years,  and  preferred  it  to  England,  "be 
cause  you've  room  to  breathe,"  but  also  found 
that  Canada  had  not  yet  learnt  social  com 
fort,  and  regretted  the  manners  of  "the  Old 
Country." 

We  woke  to  find  ourselves  sweeping  round 
a  high  cliff,  at  six  in  the  morning,  with  a  lively 
breeze,  the  river  very  blue  and  broken  into 
ripples,  and  a  lot  of  little  white  clouds  in  the 
sky.  The  air  was  full  of  gaiety  and  sunshine 
and  the  sense  of  the  singing  of  birds,  though 
actually,  I  think,  there  were  only  a  few  gulls 
crying.  It  was  the  perfection  of  a  summer 
morning,  thrilling  with  a  freshness  which,  the 


64        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

fancy  said,  was  keener  than  any  the  old  world 
knew.  And  high  and  grey  and  serene  above 
the  morning  lay  the  citadel  of  Quebec.  Is 
there  any  city  in  the  world  that  stands  so 
nobly  as  Quebec?  The  citadel  crowns  a 
headland,  three  hundred  feet  high,  that  juts 
boldly  out  into  the  St  Lawrence.  Up  to  it, 
up  the  side  of  the  hill,  clambers  the  city,  houses 
and  steeples  and  huts,  piled  one  on  the  other. 
It  has  the  individuality  and  the  pride  of  a  city 
where  great  things  have  happened,  and  over 
which  many  years  have  passed.  Quebec  is 
as  refreshing  and  as  definite  after  the  other 
cities  of  this  continent  as  an  immortal  among 
a  crowd  of  stockbrokers.  She  has,  indeed, 
the  radiance  and  repose  of  an  immortal;  but 
she  wears  her  immortality  youthfully.  When 
you  get  among  the  streets  of  Quebec,  the 
mediaeval,  precipitous,  narrow,  winding,  and 
perplexed  streets,  you  begin  to  realise  her 
charm.  She  almost  incurs  the  charge  of 
quaintness  (abhorrent  quality !) ;  but  even 
quaintness  becomes  attractive  in  this  country. 
You  are  in  a  foreign  land,  for  the  people  have 
an  alien  tongue,  short  stature,  the  quick, 
decided,  cinematographic  quality  of  move 
ment,  and  the  inexplicable  cheerfulness  which 
mark  a  foreigner.  You  might  almost  be  in 


QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGUENAY  65 

Siena  or  some  old  German  town,  except  that 
Quebec  has  her  street-cars  and  grain-elevators 
to  show  that  she  is  living. 

The  American  Jew  and  I  took  a  caleche,  a 
little  two-wheeled  local  carriage,  driven  by  a 
lively  Frenchman  with  a  factitious  passion 
for  death-spots  and  churches.  A  small  black 
and  white  spaniel  followed  the  caleche,  yapping. 
The  American's  face  shone  with  interest. 
"That  dawg's  Michael,"  he  said,  "the  hotel 
dawg.  He's  a  queer  little  dawg.  I  kicked  his 
face;  and  he  tried  to  bite  me.  Hup,  Michael ! " 
And  he  laughed  hoarsely.  "Non!"  said 
the  driver  suddenly,  "it  is  not  the  'otel 
dog."  The  American  did  not  lose  interest. 
"These  little  dawgs  are  all  alike,"  he  said. 
"Dare  say  if  you  kicked  that  dawg  in 
the  face,  he'd  bite  you.  Hup,  Michael!" 
With  that  he  fell  into  deep  thought. 

We  rattled  up  and  down  the  steep  streets, 
out  among  tidy  fields,  and  back  into  the 
noisily  sedate  city  again.  We  saw  where 
Wolfe  fell,  where  Montcalm  fell,  where  Mont 
gomery  fell.  Children  played  where  the  tides 
of  war  had  ebbed  and  flowed.  Mr  Norman 
Angell  and  his  friends  tell  us  that  trade  is 
superseding  war;  and  pacifists  declare  that 
for  the  future  countries  will  win  their  pride 


66        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

or  shame  from  commercial  treaties  and  tariffs 
and  bounties,  and  no  more  from  battles  and 
sieges.  And  there  is  a  part  of  Canadian 
patriotism  that  has  progressed  this  way.  But 
I  wonder  if  the  hearts  of  that  remarkable  race, 
posterity,  will  ever  beat  the  harder  when  they 
are  told,  "Here  Mr  Borden  stood  when  he 
decided  to  double  the  duty  on  agricultural 
implements,"  or  even  "In  this  room  Mr  Ritchie 
conceived  the  plan  of  removing  the  shilling 
on  wheat."  When  that  happens,  Quebec  will 
be  a  forgotten  ruin.  .  .  .  The  reverie  was 
broken  by  my  friend  struggling  to  his  feet 
and  standing,  unsteady  and  bareheaded,  in  the 
swaying  carriage.  In  that  position  he  burst 
hoarsely  into  a  song  that  I  recognised  as  'The 
Btar-Spangled  Banner.'  We  were  passing  the 
American  Consulate.  His  song  over,  he  settled 
down  and  fell  into  a  deep  sleep,  and  the 
caleche  jolted  down  even  narrower  streets, 
curiously  paved  with  planks,  and  ways  that 
led  through  and  under  the  ancient,  tottering 
wooden  houses. 

But  Quebec  is  too  real  a  city  to  be  'seen' 
in  such  a  manner.  And  a  better  way  of 
spending  a  few  days,  or  years,  is  to  sit  on 
Dufferin  Terrace,  with  the  old  Lower  Town 
sheer  beneath  you,  and  the  river  beyond  it, 


QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGUENAY  67 

and  the  citadel  to  the  right,  a  little  above, 
and  the  Isle  of  Orleans  and  the  French  villages 
away  down-stream  to  your  left.  Hour  by 
hour  the  colours  change,  and  sunlight  follows 
shadow,  and  mist  rises,  and  smoke  drifts 
across.  And  through  the  veil  of  the  shifting 
of  lights  and  hues  there  remains  visible  the 
majesty  of  the  most  glorious  river  in  the  world. 
From  this  contemplation,  and  from  musing 
on  men's  agreement  to  mark  by  this  one  great 
sign  of  the  Taking  of  the  Heights  of  Quebec, 
the  turning  of  one  of  the  greatest  currents  in 
our  history,  I  was  torn  by  a  journey  I  had  been 
advised  to  make.  The  boat  goes  some  hundred 
and  thirty  miles  down  the  St  Lawrence,  turns 
up  a  northern  tributary,  the  Saguenay,  goes 
as  far  as  Chicoutimi,  ninety  miles  up,  and 
returns  to  Quebec.  Both  on  this  trip,  and 
between  Quebec  and  Montreal,  we  touched  at 
many  little  French  villages,  by  day  and  by 
night.  Their  habitants,  the  French-Canadian 
peasants,  are  a  jolly  sight.  They  are  like 
children  in  their  noisy  content.  They  are 
poor  and  happy,  Roman  Catholics;  they  laugh 
a  great  deal;  and  they  continually  sing.  They 
do  not  progress  at  all.  As  a  counter  to  these 
admirable  people  we  had  on  our  boat  a  great 
many  priests.  They  diffused  an  atmosphere 


68        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

of  black,  of  unpleasant  melancholy.  Their 
face  had  that  curiously  unwashed  look,  and 
were  for  the  most  part  of  a  mean  and  very 
untrustworthy  expression.  Their  eyes  were 
small,  shifty,  and  cruel,  and  would  not  meet 
the  gaze.  .  .  .  The  choice  between  our  own 
age  and  mediaeval  times  is  a  very  hard  one. 

It  was  almost  full  night  when  we  left  the 
twenty-mile  width  of  the  St  Lawrence,  and 
turned  up  a  gloomy  inlet.  By  reason  of  the 
night  and  of  comparison  with  the  river  from 
which  we  had  come,  this  stream  appeared  un 
naturally  narrow.  Darkness  hid  all  detail, 
and  we  were  only  aware  of  vast  cliffs,  some 
times  dense  with  trees,  sometimes  bare  faces 
of  sullen  rock.  They  shut  us  in,  oppressively, 
but  without  heat.  There  are  no  banks  to  this 
river,  for  the  most  part;  only  these  walls, 
rising  sheer  from  the  water  to  the  height  of 
two  thousand  feet,  going  down  sheer  beneath 
it,  or  rather  by  the  side  of  it,  to  many  times 
that  depth.  The  water  was  of  some  colour 
blacker  than  black.  Even  by  daylight  it  is 
inky  and  sinister.  It  flows  without  foam  or 
ripple.  No  white  showed  in  the  wake  of  the 
boat.  The  ominous  shores  were  without  sign 
of  life,  save  for  a  rare  light  every  few  miles, 
to  mark  some  bend  in  the  chasm.  Once  a 


QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGUENAY  69 

canoe  with  two  Indians  shot  out  of  the  shadows, 
passed  under  our  stern,  and  vanished  silently 
down-stream.  We  all  became  hushed  and 
apprehensive.  The  night  was  gigantic  and 
terrible.  There  were  a  few  stars,  but  the 
flood  slid  along  too  swiftly  to  reflect  them. 
The  whole  scene  seemed  some  Stygian  imag 
ination  of  Dante.  As  we  drew  further  and 
further  into  that  lightless  land,  little  twists 
and  curls  of  vapour  wriggled  over  the  black 
river-surface.  Our  homeless,  irrelevant,  tiny 
steamer  seemed  to  hang  between  two  abysms. 
One  became  suddenly  aware  of  the  miles  of 
dark  water  beneath.  I  found  that  under  a 
prolonged  gaze  the  face  of  the  river  began  to 
writhe  and  eddy,  as  if  from  some  horrible 
suppressed  emotion.  It  seemed  likely  that 
something  might  appear.  I  reflected  that  if 
the  river  failed  us,  all  hope  was  gone;  and 
that  anyhow  this  region  was  the  abode  of 
devils.  I  went  to  bed. 

Next  day  we  steamed  down  the  river  again. 
By  daylight  some  of  the  horror  goes,  but  the 
impression  of  ancientness  and  desolation  re 
mains.  The  gloomy  flood  is  entirely  shut  in 
by  the  rock  or  the  tangled  pine  and  birch 
forests  of  these  great  cliffs,  except  in  one  or 
two  places,  where  a  chine  and  a  beach  have 


70        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

given  lodging  to  lonely  villages.  One  of  these 
is  at  the  end  of  a  long  bay,  called  Ha-Ha 
Bay.  The  local  guide-book,  an  early  example 
of  the  school  of  fantastic  realism  so  popular 
among  our  younger  novelists,  says  that  this 
name  arose  from  the  'laughing  ejaculations' 
of  the  early  French  explorers,  who  had  mis 
taken  this  lengthy  blind-alley  for  the  main 
stream.  'Ha!  Ha!'  they  said.  So  like  an 
early  explorer. 

At  the  point  where  the  Saguenay  joins 
the  St  Lawrence,  here  twenty  miles  wide,  I 
'stopped  off'  for  a  day,  to  feel  the  country 
more  deeply.  The  village  is  called  Tadousac, 
and  consists  of  an  hotel  and  French  fishermen, 
to  whom  Quebec  is  a  distant,  unvisited  city 
of  legend.  The  afternoon  was  very  hot.  I 
wandered  out  along  a  thin  margin  of  yellow 
sand  to  the  extreme  rocky  point  where  the 
waters  of  the  two  rivers  meet  and  swirl.  There 
I  lay,  and  looked  at  the  strange  humps  of  the 
Laurentian  hills,  and  the  dark  green  masses 
of  the  woods,  impenetrable  depths  of  straight 
and  leaning  and  horizontal  trees,  broken  here 
and  there  by  great  bald  granite  rocks,  and 
behind  me  the  little  village,  where  the  earliest 
church  in  Canada  stands.  Away  in  the  *St 
Lawrence  there  would  be  a  flash  as  an  immense 


QUEBEC  AND  THE  SAGUENAY  71 

white  fish  jumped.  Miles  out  an  occasional 
steamer  passed,  bound  to  England  perhaps. 
And  once,  hugging  the  coast,  came  a  half- 
breed  paddling  a  canoe,  with  a  small  diamond- 
shaped  sail,  filled  with  trout.  The  cliff  above 
me  was  crowned  with  beds  of  blue  flowers, 
whose  names  I  did  not  know.  Against  the 
little  gulfs  and  coasts  of  rock  at  my  feet  were 
washing  a  few  white  logs  of  driftwood.  I 
wondered  if  they  could  have  floated  across 
from  England,  or  if  they  could  be  from 
the  Titanic.  The  sun  was  very  hot,  the  sky 
a  clear  light  blue,  almost  cloudless,  like  an 
English  sky,  and  the  water  seemed  fairly 
deep.  I  stripped,  hovered  a  while  on  the  brink, 
and  plunged.  The  current  was  unexpectedly 
strong.  I  seemed  to  feel  that  two-mile-deep 
body  of  black  water  moving  against  me. 
And  it  was  cold  as  death.  Stray  shreds  of 
the  St  Lawrence  water  were  warm  and  cheer 
ful.  But  the  current  of  the  Saguenay,  on 
such  a  day,  seemed  unnaturally  icy.  As  my 
head  came  up  I  made  one  dash  for  the  land, 
scrambled  out  on  the  hot  rocks,  and  lay  there 
panting.  Then  I  dried  on  a  handkerchief, 
dressed,  and  ran  back  home,  still  shivering, 
through  the  woods  to  the  hotel. 


VII 
ONTARIO 


VII 
ONTARIO 

THE  great  joy  of  travelling  in  Canada  is  to  do 
it  by  water.  The  advantage  of  this  is  that 
you  can  keep  fairly  clean  and  quiet  of  nerves; 
the  disadvantage  is  that  you  don't  'see  the 
country.'  I  travelled  most  of  the  way  from 
Ottawa  to  Toronto  by  water.  But  between 
Ottawa  and  Prescott  then,  and  later  from 
Toronto  to  Niagara  Falls,  and  thence  to 
Sarnia,  there  is  a  good  deal  of  Southern 
Ontario  to  be  seen — the  part  which  has  counted 
as  Ontario  so  far.  And  I  saw  it  through  a 
faint  grey-pink  mist  of  Heimweh.  For  after 
the  States  and  after  Quebec  it  is  English. 
There  are  weather-beaten  farm-houses,  rolling 
country,  thickets  of  trees,  little  hills  green  and 
grey  in  the  distance,  decorous  small  fields, 
orchards,  and,  I  swear,  a  hedge  or  two.  Most 
of  the  towns  we  went  through  are  a  little  too 
vivacious  or  too  pert  to  be  European.  But 
there  seemed  to  be  real  villages  occasionally, 
and  the  land  had  a  quiet  air  of  occupation. 

75 


76        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

Men  have  lived  contentedly  on  this  land  and 
died  where  they  were  born,  and  so  given  it  a 
certain  sanctity.  Away  north  the  wild  begins, 
and  is  only  now  being  brought  into  civilisa 
tion,  inhabited,  made  productive,  explored, 
and  exploited.  But  this  country  has  seen  the 
generations  pass,  and  won  something  of  that 
repose  and  security  which  countries  acquire 
from  the  sight. 

The  wise  traveller  from  Ottawa  to  Toronto 
catches  a  boat  at  Prescott,  and  puffs  judicially 
between  two  nations  up  the  St  Lawrence  and 
across  Lake  Ontario.  We  were  a  cosmopolitan, 
middle-class  bunch  (it  is  the  one  distinction 
between  the  Canadian  and  American  languages 
that  Canadians  tend  to  say  'bunch'  but 
Americans  'crowd'),  out  to  enjoy  the  scenery. 
For  this  stretch  of  the  river  is  notoriously 
picturesque,  containing  the  Thousand  Isles. 
The  Thousand  Isles  vary  from  six  inches  to 
hundreds  of  yards  in  diameter.  Each,  if  big 
enough,  has  been  bought  by  a  rich  man — 
generally  an  American — who  has  built  a  castle 
on  it.  So  the  whole  isn't  much  more  beautiful 
than  Colder 's  Green.  We  picked  our  way 
carefully  between  the  islands.  The  Americans 
on  board  sat  in  rows  saying  "That  house  was 
built  by  Mr .  Made  his  money  in  biscuits. 


ONTARIO  77 

Cost  three  hundred  thousand  dollars,  e-recting 
that  building.  Yessir."  The  Canadians  sat 
looking  out  the  other  way,  and  said,  "In 
nineteen-ten  this  land  was  worth  twenty 
thousand  an  acre;  now  it's  worth  forty -five 
thousand.  Next  year  .  .  ."  and  their  eyes 
grew  solemn  as  the  eyes  of  men  who  think 
deep  and  holy  thoughts.  But  the  English  sat 
quite  still,  looking  straight  in  front  of  them, 
thinking  of  nothing  at  all,  and  hoping  that 
nobody  would  speak  to  them.  So  we  fared; 
until,  well  on  in  the  afternoon,  we  came  to 
the  entrance  of  Lake  Ontario. 

There  is  something  ominous  and  unnatural 
about  these  great  lakes.  The  sweet  flow  of 
a  river,  and  the  unfriendly  restless  vitality 
of  the  sea,  men  may  know  and  love.  And 
the  little  lakes  we  have  in  Europe  are  but 
as  fresh-water  streams  that  have  married 
and  settled  down,  alive  and  healthy  and 
comprehensible.  Rivers  (except  the  Saguenay) 
are  human.  The  sea,  very  properly,  will  not 
be  allowed  in  heaven.  It  has  no  soul.  It  is 
unvintageable,  cruel,  treacherous,  what  you 
will.  But,  in  the  end — while  we  have  it  with 
us — it  is  all  right;  even  though  that  all- 
rightness  result  but,  as  with  France,  from  the 
recognition  of  an  age-long  feud  and  an  irre- 


78        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

mediable  lack  of  sympathy.  But  these  mon 
strous  lakes,  which  ape  the  ocean,  are  not 
proper  to  fresh  water  or  salt.  They  have 
souls,  perceptibly,  and  wicked  ones. 

We  steamed  out,  that  day,  over  a  flat, 
stationary  mass  of  water,  smooth  with  the 
smoothness  of  metal  or  polished  stone  or  one's 
finger-nail.  There  was  a  slight  haze  every 
where.  The  lake  was  a  terrible  dead-silver 
colour,  the  gleam  of  its  surface  shot  with  flecks 
of  blue  and  a  vapoury  enamel-green.  It  was 
like  a  gigantic  silver  shield.  Its  glint  was 
inexplicably  sinister  and  dead,  like  the  glint 
on  glasses  worn  by  a  blind  man.  In  front 
the  steely  mist  hid  the  horizon,  so  that  the 
occasional  rock  or  little  island  and  the  one 
ship  in  sight  seemed  hung  in  air.  They  were 
reflected  to  a  preternatural  length  in  the 
glassy  floor.  Our  boat  appeared  to  leave  no 
wake;  those  strange  waters  closed  up  foam- 
lessly  behind  her.  But  our  black  smoke  hung, 
away  back  on  the  trail,  in  a  thick,  clearly- 
bounded  cloud,  becalmed  in  the  hot,  windless 
air,  very  close  over  the  water,  like  an  evil 
soul  after  death  that  cannot  win  dissolution. 
Behind  us  and  to  the  right  lay  the  low,  woody 
shores  of  Southern  Ontario  and  Prince  Edward 
Peninsula,  long  dark  lines  of  green,  stretching 


ONTARIO  79 

thinner  and  thinner,  interminably,  into  the 
distance.  The  lake  around  us  was  dull, 
though  the  sun  shone  full  on  it.  It  gleamed, 
but  without  radiance. 

Toronto  (pronounce  T'ranto,  please)  is  diffi 
cult  to  describe.  It  has  an  individuality,  but 
an  elusive  one;  yet  not  through  any  queer- 
ness  or  difficult  shade  of  eccentricity;  a  subtly 
normal,  an  indefinably  obvious  personality. 
It  is  a  healthy,  cheerful  city  (by  modern 
standards);  a  clean-shaven,  pink-faced,  re 
spectably  dressed,  fairly  energetic,  unintel- 
lectual,  passably  sociable,  well-to-do,  public- 
school-and-'varsity  sort  of  city.  One  knows 
in  one's  own  life  certain  bright  and  pleasant 
figures;  people  who  occupy  the  nearer  middle 
distance,  unobtrusive  but  not  negligible;  war 
dens  of  the  marches  between  acquaintance 
ship  and  friendship.  It  is  always  nice  to  meet 
them,  and  in  parting  one  looks  back  at  them 
once.  They  are,  healthily  and  simply,  the 
most  fitting  product  of  a  not  perfect  en 
vironment;  good-sorts;  normal,  but  not  too 
normal;  distinctly  themselves,  but  not  dis 
tinguished.  They  support  civilisation.  You 
can  trust  them  in  anything,  if  your  demand 
be  for  nothing  extremely  intelligent  or  absurdly 
altruistic.  One  of  these  could  be  exhibited 


80        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

in  any  gallery  in  the  universe,  'Perfect  Speci 
men;  Upper  Middle  Classes;  Twentieth 
Century' — and  we  should  not  be  ashamed. 
They  are  not  vexed  by  impossible  dreams, 
nor  outrageously  materialists,  nor  perplexed 
by  overmuch  prosperity,  nor  spoilt  by  re 
verse.  Souls  for  whom  the  wind  is  always 
nor'-nor'-west,  and  they  sail  nearer  success 
than  failure,  and  nearer  wisdom  than  lunacy. 
Neither  leaders  nor  slaves — but  no  Tomlinsons  ! 
— whomsoever  of  your  friends  you  miss,  them 
you  will  certainly  meet  again,  not  unduly 
pardoned,  the  fifty-first  by  the  Throne. 

Such  is  Toronto.  A  brisk  city  of  getting 
on  for  half  a  million  inhabitants,  the  largest 
British  city  in  Canada  (in  spite  of  the  cheery 
Italian  faces  that  pop  up  at  you  out  of  excava 
tions  in  the  street),  liberally  endowed  with 
millionaires,  not  lacking  its  due  share  of  destitu 
tion,  misery,  and  slums.  It  is  no  mushroom 
city  of  the  West,  it  has  its  history;  but  at 
the  same  time  it  has  grown  immensely  of  recent 
years.  It  is  situated  on  the  shores  of  a  lovely 
lake;  but  you  never  see  that,  because  the 
railways  have  occupied  the  entire  lake  front. 
So  if,  at  evening,  you  try  to  find  your  way  to 
the  edge  of  the  water,  you  are  checked  by  a 
region  of  smoke,  sheds,  trucks,  wharves,  store- 


ONTARIO  81 

houses,  'depots,'  railway-lines,  signals,  and 
locomotives  and  trains  that  wander  on  the 
tracks  up  and  down  and  across  streets,  pushing 
their  way  through  the  pedestrians,  and  tolling, 
as  they  go,  in  the  American  fashion,  an  im 
mense  melancholy  bell,  intent,  apparently, 
on  some  private  and  incommunicable  grief. 
Higher  up  are  the  business  quarters,  a  few 
sky-scrapers  in  the  American  style  without  the 
modern  American  beauty,  but  one  of  which 
advertises  itself  as  the  highest  in  the  British 
Empire;  streets  that  seem  less  narrow  than 
Montreal,  but  not  unrespectably  wide;  "the 
buildings  are  generally  substantial  and  often 
handsome"  (the  too  kindly  Herr  Baedeker). 
Beyond  that  the  residential  part,  with  quiet 
streets,  gardens  open  to  the  road,  shady 
verandahs,  and  homes,  generally  of  wood, 
that  are  a  deal  more  pleasant  to  see  than  the 
houses  in  a  modern  English  town. 

Toronto  is  the  centre  and  heart  of  the  Prov 
ince  of  Ontario;  and  Ontario,  with  a  third 
of  the  whole  population  of  Canada,  directs 
the  country  for  the  present,  conditioned  by 
the  French  on  one  hand  and  the  West  on  the 
other.  And  in  this  land,  that  is  as  yet  hardly 
at  all  conscious  of  itself  as  a  nation,  Toronto 
and  Ontario  do  their  best  in  leading  and  realis- 


82        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

ing  national  sentiment.  A  Toronto  man,  like 
most  Canadians,  dislikes  an  Englishman;  but, 
unlike  some  Canadians,  he  detests  an  American. 
And  he  has  some  inkling  of  the  conditions 
and  responsibilities  of  the  British  Empire. 
The  tradition  is  in  him.  His  father  fought 
to  keep  Canada  British. 

It  is  never  easy  to  pick  out  of  the  turmoil 
of  an  election  the  real  powers  that  have  moved 
men;  and  it  is  especially  difficult  in  a  country 
where  politics  are  so  corrupt  as  they  are  in 
Canada.  But  certainly  this  British  feeling 
helped  to  throw  Ontario,  and  so  the  country, 
against  Reciprocity  with  the  United  States 
in  1911;  and  it  is  keeping  it,  in  the  comedy 
of  the  Navy  Question,  on  Mr  Borden's  side — 
rather  from  distrust  of  his  opponent's  sincerity, 
perhaps,  than  from  admiration  of  the  fix  he 
is  in.  It  has  been  used,  this  patriotism,  to 
aid  the  wealthy  interests,  which  are  all-power 
ful  here;  and  it  will  continue  to  be  a  ball  in 
the  tennis  of  party  politics.  But  it  is  real; 
it  will  remain,  potential  of  good,  among  all 
the  forces  that  are  certain  for  evil. 

Toronto,  soul  of  Canada,  is  wealthy,  busy, 
commercial,  Scotch,  absorbent  of  ^whisky; 
but  she  is  duly  aware  of  other  things.  She  has 
a  most  modern  and  efficient  interest  in  educa- 


ONTARIO  83 

tion;  and  here  are  gathered  what  faint,  faint 
beginnings  or  premonitions  of  such  things  as 
Art  Canada  can  boast  (except  the  French- 
Canadians,  who,  it  is  complained,  produce 
disproportionately  much  literature,  and  waste 
their  time  on  their  own  unprofitable  songs). 
Most  of  those  few  who  have  begun  to  paint 
the  landscape  of  Canada  centre  there,  and  a 
handful  of  people  who  know  about  books. 
In  these  things,  as  in  all,  this  city  is  properly 
and  cheerfully  to  the  front.  It  can  scarcely 
be  doubted  that  the  first  Repertory  Theatre 
in  Canada  will  be  founded  in  Toronto,  some 
thirty  years  hence,  and  will  very  daringly 
perform  Candida  and  The  Silver  Box.  Canada 
is  a  live  country,  live,  but  not,  like  the  States, 
kicking.  In  these  trifles  of  Art  and  'culture,' 
indeed,  she  is  much  handicapped  by  the 
proximity  of  the  States.  For  her  poets  and 
writers  are  apt  to  be  drawn  thither,  for  the 
better  companionship  there  and  the  higher 
rates  of  pay. 

But  Toronto — Toronto  is  the  subject.  One 
must  say  something — what  must  one  say  about 
Toronto?  What  can  one?  What  has  any 
body  ever  said?  It  is  impossible  to  give  it 
anything  but  commendation.  It  is  not  squalid 
like  Birmingham,  or  cramped  like  Canton, 


84        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

or  scattered  like  Edmonton,  or  sham  like 
Berlin,  or  hellish  like  New  York,  or  tiresome 
like  Nice.  It  is  all  right.  The  only  depressing 
thing  is  that  it  will  always  be  what  it  is,  only 
larger,  and  that  no  Canadian  city  can  ever  be 
anything  better  or  different.  If  they  are  good 
they  may  become  Toronto. 


VIII 
NIAGARA  FALLS 


VIII 
NIAGARA  FALLS 

SAMUEL  BUTLER  has  a  lot  to  answer  for.  But 
for  him,  a  modern  traveller  could  spend  his 
time  peacefully  admiring  the  scenery  instead 
of  feeling  himself  bound  to  dog  the  simple 
and  grotesque  of  the  world  for  the  sake  of  their 
too-human  comments.  It  is  his  fault  if  a 
peasant's  naivete  has  come  to  outweigh  the 
beauty  of  rivers,  and  the  remarks  of  clergymen 
are  more  than  mountains.  It  is  very  restful 
to  give  up  all  effort  at  observing  human  nature 
and  drawing  social  and  political  deductions 
from  trifles,  and  to  let  oneself  relapse  into 
wide-mouthed  worship  of  the  wonders  of 
nature.  And  this  is  very  easy  at  Niagara. 
Niagara  means  nothing.  It  is  not  leading 
anywhere.  It  does  not  result  from  anything. 
It  throws  no  light  on  the  effects  of  Protection, 
nor  on  the  Facility  for  Divorce  in  America, 
nor  on  Corruption  in  Public  Life,  nor  on 
Canadian  character,  nor  even  on  the  Navy 
Bill.  It  is  merely  a  great  deal  of  water  falling 

87 


88        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

over  some  cliffs.  But  it  is  very  remarkably 
that.  The  human  race,  apt  as  a  child  to 
destroy  what  it  admires,  has  done  its  best 
to  surround  the  Falls  with  every  distraction, 
incongruity,  and  vulgarity.  Hotels,  power 
houses,  bridges,  trams,  picture  post-cards, 
sham  legends,  stalls,  booths,  rifle-galleries, 
and  side-shows  frame  them  about.  And 
there  are  Touts.  Niagara  is  the  central  home 
and  breeding-place  for  all  the  touts  of  earth. 
There  are  touts  insinuating,  and  touts  raucous, 
greasy  touts,  brazen  touts,  and  upper-class, 
refined,  gentlemanly,  take  -  you  -  by  -  the  -  arm 
touts;  touts  who  intimidate  and  touts  who 
wheedle;  professionals,  amateurs,  and  dilet 
tanti,  male  and  female;  touts  who  would 
photograph  you  with  your  arm  round  a 
young  lady  against  a  faked  background  of 
the  sublimest  cataract,  touts  who  would 
bully  you  into  cars,  char-a-bancs,  elevators,  or 
tunnels,  or  deceive  you  into  a  carriage  and 
pair,  touts  who  would  sell  you  picture  post 
cards,  moccasins,  sham  Indian  beadwork, 
blankets,  tee-pees,  and  crockery,  and  touts, 
finally,  who  have  no  apparent  object  in  the 
world,  but  just  purely,  simply,  merely,  in 
cessantly,  indefatigably,  and  ineffugibly  to 
tout.  And  in  the  midst  of  all  this,  over- 


NIAGARA  FALLS  89 


whelming  it  all,  are  the  Falls*/  He  who  sees 

^them  instantly  forgets  humanity.     They  are 

>      not   very   high,   but   they   are   overpowering. 

They  are  divided  by  an  island  into  two  parts, 

the  Canadian  and  the  American^/— 

Half  a  mile  or  so  above  the  Falls,  on 
either  side,  the  water  of  the  great  stream 
begins  to  run  more  swiftly  and  in  con 
fusion.  It  descends  with  ever-growing  speed. 
It  begins  chattering  and  leaping,  breaking 
into  a  thousand  ripples,  throwing  up  joyful 
fingers  of  spray.  Sometimes  it  is  divided  by 
islands  and  rocks,  sometimes  the  eye  can  see 
nothing  but  a  waste  of  laughing,  springing, 
foamy  waves,  turning,  crossing,  even  seem 
ing  to  stand  for  an  instant  erect,  but  always 
borne  impetuously  forward  like  a  crowd  of 
triumphant  feasters.  Sit  close  down  by  it, 
and  you  see  a  fragment  of  the  torrent  against 
the  sky,  mottled,  steely,  and  foaming,  leaping 
onward  in  far-flung  criss-cross  strands  of 
water.  Perpetually  the  eye  is  on  the  point 
of  descrying  a  pattern  in  this  weaving,  and 
perpetually  it  is  cheated  by  change.  In  one 
place  part  of  the  flood  plunges  over  a  ledge 
a  few  feet  high  and  a  quarter  of  a  mile  or  so 
long,  in  a  uniform  and  stable  curve.  It 
gives  an  impression  of  almost  military  con- 


90        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

certed  movement,  grown  suddenly  out  of 
confusion.  But  it  is  swiftly  lost  again  in  the 
multitudinous  tossing  merriment.  Here  and 
there  a  rock  close  to  the  surface  is  marked 
by  a  white  wave  that  faces  backwards  and 
seems  to  be  rushing  madly  up-stream,  but 
is  really  stationary  in  the  headlong  charge. 
But  for  these  signs  of  reluctance,  the  waters 
seem  to  fling  themselves  on  with  some  fore 
knowledge  of  their  fate,  in  an  ever  wilder 
frenzy.  But  it  is  no  Maeterlinckian  pre 
science.  They  prove,  rather,  that  Greek 
belief  that  the  great  crashes  are  preceded 
by  a  louder  merriment  and  a  wilder  gaiety. 
Leaping  in  the  sunlight,  careless,  entwining, 
clamorously  joyful,  the  waves  riot  on  to 
wards  the  verge.  u^  \^ 
_But  there  they  change.  As  they  turn  to 
the  sheer  descent,  the  white  and  blue  and 
slate  colour,  in  the  heart  of  the  Canadian 
Falls  at  least,  blend  and  deepen  to  a  rich, 
wonderful,  luminous  green.  On  the  edge 
of  disaster  the  river  seems  to  gather  herself, 
to  pause,  to  lift  a  head  noble  in  ruin,  and 
then,  with  a  slow  grandeur,  to  plunge  into 
the  eternal  thunder  and  white  chaos  below. 
Where  the  stream  runs  shallower  it  is  a  kind 
of  violet  colour,  but  both  violet  and  green 


NIAGARA  FALLS  91 

fray  and  frill  to  white  as  they  fall.  The 
mass  of  water,  striking  some  ever-hidden 
base  of  rock,  leaps  up  the  whole  two  hundred 
feet  again  in  pinnacles  and  domes  of  spray. 
The  spray  falls  back  into  the  lower  river 
once  more;  all  but  a  little  that  ffae^to  foam 
and  white  mist,  which  drifts  in  layers  along 
the  air,  graining  it,  and  wanders  out  on  the 
wind  over  the  trees  and  gardens  and  houses, 
and  so  vanishes. 

The  manager  of  one  of  the  great  power- 
stations  on  the  banks  of  the  river  above  the 
Falls  told  me  that  the  centre  of  the  river 
bed  at  the  Canadian  Falls  is  deep  and  of  a 
saucer  shape.  So  it  may  be  possible  to  fill 
this  up  to  a  uniform  depth,  and  divert  a  lot 
of  water  for  the  power-houses.  And  this, 
he  said,  would  supply  the  need  for  more 
power,  which  will  certainly  soon  arise,  with 
out  taking  away  from  the  beauty  of  Niagara. 
This  is  a  handsome  concession  of  the  utili 
tarians  to  ordinary  sight-seers.  Yet,  I  doubt 
if  we  shall  be  satisfied.  The  real  secret 
of  the  beauty  and  terror  of  the  Falls  is  not 
their  height  or  width,  but  the  feeling  of 
colossal  power  and  of  unintelligible  disaster 
caused  by  the  plunge  of  that  vast  body  of 
water.  If  that  were  taken  away,  there  would 


92        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

be  little  visible  change,  but  the  heart  would 
be  gone. 

The  American  Falls  do  not  inspire  this 
feeling  in  the  same  way  as  the  Canadian.  It 
is  because  they  are  less  in  volume,  and  be 
cause  the  water  does  not  fall  so  much  into 
one  place.  By  comparison  their  beauty  is 
almost  delicate  and  fragile.  They  are  extra 
ordinarily  level,  one  long  curtain  of  lacework 
and  woven  foam.  Seen  from  opposite,  when 
the  sun  is  on  them,  they  are  blindingly  white, 
and  the  clouds  of  spray  show  dark  against 
them.  With  both  Falls  the  colour  of  the 
water  is  the  ever-altering  wonder.  Greens 
and  blues,  purples  and  whites,  melt  into  one 
another,  fade,  and  come  again,  and  change 
with  the  changing  sun.  Sometimes  they  are 
as  richly  diaphanous  as  a  precious  stone,  and 
glow  from  within  with  a  deep,  inexplicable 
light.  Sometimes  the  white  intricacies  of 
dropping  foam  become  opaque  and  creamy. 
And  always  there  are  the  rainbows.  If  you 
come  suddenly  upon  the  Falls  from  above, 
a  great  double  rainbow,  very  vivid,  spanning 
the  extent  of  spray  from  top  to  bottom,  is 
the  first  thing  you  see.  If  you  wander  along 
the  cliff  opposite,  a  bow  springs  into  being 
in  the  American  Falls,  accompanies  you 


NIAGARA  FALLS  93 

courteously  on  your  walk,  dwindles  and  dies 
as  the  mist  ends,  and  awakens  again  as  you 
the   Canadiantumult^And  the  bold 


traveller  who  attempts  the  trip  under  the 
American  Falls  sees,  when  he  dare  open  his 
eyes  to  anything,  tiny  baby  rainbows,  some 
four  or  five  yards  in  span,  leaping  from  rock 
to  rock  among  the  foam,  and  gambolling 
beside  him,  barely  out  of  hand's  reach,  as  he 
goes.  One  I  saw  in  that  place  was  a  complete 
circle,  such  as  I  have  never  seen  before, 
and  so  near  that  I  could  put  my  foot  on  it. 
It  is  a  terrifying  journey,  beneath  and  behind 
the  Falls.  The  senses  are  battered  and  be 
wildered  by  the  thunder  of  the  water  and  the 
assault  of  wind  and  spray;  or  rather,  the 
sound  is  not  of  falling  water,  but  merely  of 
falling;  a  noise  of  unspecified  ruin.  So,  if 
you  are  close  behind  the  endless  clamour,  the 
sight  cannot  recognise  liquid  in  the  masses 
that  hurl  past.  You  are  dimly  and  pitifully 
aware  that  sheets  of  light  and  darkness  are 
falling  in  great  curves  in  front  of  you.  Dull 
omnipresent  foam  washes  the  face.  Farther 
away,  in  the  roar  and  hissing,  clouds  of  spray 
seem  literally  to  slide  down  some  invisible 
plane  of  air. 
Beyond  the  foot  of  the  Falls  the  river  is 


94        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

like  a  slipping  floor  of  marble,  green  with 
veins  of  dirty  white,  made  by  the  scum  that 
was  foam.  It  slides  very  quietly  and  slowly 
down  for  a  mile  or  two,  sullenly  exhausted. 
Then  it  turns  to  a  dull  sage  green,  and  hurries 
more  swiftly,  smooth  and  ominous.  As  the 
walls  of  the  ravine  close  in,  trouble  stirs,  and 
the  waters  boil  and  eddy.  These  are  the 
lower  rapids,  a  sight  more  terrifying  than  the 
Falls,  because  less  intelligible.  Close  in  its 
bands  of  rock  the  river  surges  tumultuously 
forward,  writhing  and  leaping  as  if  inspired 
by  a  demon.  It  is  pressed  by  the  straits 
into  a  visibly  convex  form.  Great  planes 
of  water  slide  past.  Sometimes  it  is  thrown 
up  into  a  pinnacle  of  foam  higher  than 
a  house,  or  leaps  with  incredible  speed 
from  the  crest  of  one  vast  wave  to  another, 
along  the  shining  curve  between,  like  the 
spring  of  a  wild  beast.  Its  motion  continu 
ally  suggests  muscular  action.  The  power 
manifest  in  these  rapids  moves  one  with  a 
different  sense  of  awe  and  terror  from  that 
of  the  Falls.  Here  the  inhuman  life  and 
strength  are  spontaneous,  active,  almost  res 
olute;  masculine  vigour  compared  with  the 
passive  gigantic  power,  female,  helpless  and 
overwhelming,  of  the  Falls.  A  place  of  fear. 


NIAGARA  FALLS  95 


;x- 


One  is  drawn  back,  strangely,  to  a  con 
templation  of  the  Falls,  at  every  hour,  and 
especially  by  night,  when  the  cloud  of  spray 
becomes  an  immense  visible  ghost,  straining 
and  wavering  high  above  the  river,  white 
and  pathetic  and  translucent.  The  Victorian 
lies  very  close  below  the  surface  in  every  man. 
There  one  can  sit  and  let  great  cloudy  thoughts 
of  destiny  and  the  passage  of  empires  drift 
through  the  mind;  for  such  dreams  are  at 
home  by  Niagara.  I  could  not  get  out  of 
my  mind  the  thought  of  a  friend,  who  said 
that  the  rainbows  over  the  Falls  were  like  the 
arts  and  beauty  and  goodness,  with  regard 
to  the  stream  of  life  —  caused  by  it,  thrown 
upon  its  spray,  but  unable  to  stay  or  direct 
or  affect  it,  and  ceasing  when  it  ceased.  In 
all  comparisons  that  rise  in  the  heart,  the 
river,  with  its  multitudinous  waves  and  its 
single  current,  likens  itself  to  a  life,  whether 
of  an  individual  or  of  a  community.  A  man's 
life  is  of  many  flashing  moments,  and  yet 
one  stream;  a  nation's  flows  through  all  its 
citizens,  and  yet  is  more  than  they.  In  such 
places,  one  is  aware,  with  an  almost  insup 
portable  and  yet  comforting  certitude,  that 
both  men  and  nations  are  hurried  onwards 
to  their  ruin  or  ending  as  inevitably  as  this 


96        LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

dark  flood.  Some  go  down  to  it  unreluctant, 
and  meet  it,  like  the  river,  not  without 
nobility.  And  as  incessant,  as  inevitable, 
and  as  unavailing  as  the  spray  that  hangs 
over  the  Falls,  is  the  white  cloud  of  human 
crying.  .  .  .  With  some  such  thoughts  does 
the  platitudinous  heart  win  from  the  con 
fusion  and  thunder  of  a^  Niagara/ peace  that 
the  quietest  plains  or  most  stable  hills  can 
never  give. 


IX 
TO  WINNIPEG 


IX 
TO  WINNIPEG 

THE  boats  that  run  from  Sarnia  the  whole 
length  of  Lake  Huron  and  Lake  Superior 
are  not  comfortable.  But  no  doubt  a  train 
for  those  six  hundred  miles  would  be  worse. 
You  start  one  afternoon,  and  in  the  morning 
of  the  next  day  you  have  done  with  the 
rather  colourless,  unindividual  expanses  of 
Huron,  and  are  dawdling  along  a  canal  that 
joins  the  lakes,  by  the  little  town  of  Sault 
Ste  Marie  (pronounced,  abruptly,  'Soo')- 
We  happened  on  it  one  Sunday.  The  nearer 
waters  of  the  river  and  the  lakes  were  covered 
with  little  sailing  or  rowing  or  bathing  parties. 
Everybody  seemed  cheerful,  merry,  and 
mildly  raucous.  There  is  a  fine,  breezy, 
enviable  healthiness  about  Canadian  life. 
Except  in  some  Eastern  cities,  there  are  few 
clerks  or  working-men  but  can  get  away  to 
the  woods  and  water. 

As  we  drew  out  into  the  cold  magnificence 
of  Lake  Superior,  the  receding  woody  shores 


100      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

were  occasionally  spotted  with  picnickers  or 
campers,  who  rushed  down  the  beach  in  various 
deshabille,  waving  towels,  handkerchiefs,  or 
garments.  We  were  as  friendly.  The  human 
race  seemed  a  jolly  bunch,  and  the  world  a 
fine,  pleasant,  open-air  affair — 'some  world,' 
in  fact.  A  man  in  a  red  shirt  and  a  bronzed 
girl  with  flowing  hair  slid  past  in  a  canoe.  We 
whistled,  sang,  and  cried  *  Snooky-ookums ! ' 
and  other  words  of  occult  meaning,  which 
imputed  love  to  them,  and  foolishness.  They 
replied  suitably,  grinned,  and  were  gone.  A 
little  old  lady  in  black,  in  the  chair  next  mine, 
kept  a  small  telescope  glued  to  her  eye,  hour 
after  hour.  Whenever  she  distinguished  life 
on  any  shore  we  passed,  she  waved  a  tiny 
handkerchief.  Diligently  she  did  this,  and 
with  grave  face,  never  visible  to  the  objects 
of  her  devotion,  I  suppose,  but  certainly  very 
happy;  the  most  persistent  lover  of  humanity 
I  have  ever  seen.  .  .  . 

In  the  afternoon  we  were  beyond  sight  of 
land.  The  world  grew  a  little  chilly;  and 
over  the  opaque,  hueless  water  came  sliding 
a  queer,  pale  mist.  We  strained  through  it 
for  hours,  a  low  bank  of  cloud,  not  twenty 
feet  in  height,  on  which  one  could  look  down 
from  the  higher  deck.  Its  upper  surface  was 


TO  WINNIPEG  101 

quite  flat  and  smooth,  save  for  innumerable 
tiny  molehills  or  pyramids  of  mist.  We  seemed 
to  be  ploughing  aimlessly  through  the  phan 
tasmal  sand-dunes  of  another  world,  faintly 
and  by  an  accident  apprehended.  So  may 
the  shades  on  a  ghostly  liner,  plunging  down 
Lethe,  have  an  hour's  chance  glimpse  of  the 
lights  and  lives  of  Piccadilly,  to  them  uncer 
tain  and  filmy  mirages  of  the  air. 

To  taste  the  full  deliciousness  of  travelling 
in  an  American  train  by  night  through  new 
scenery,  you  must  carefully  secure  a  lower 
berth.  And  when  you  are  secret  and  separate 
in  your  little  oblong  world,  safe  between 
sheets,  pull  up  the  blinds  on  the  great  window 
a  few  inches  and  leave  them  so.  Thus,  as 
you  lie,  you  can  view  the  dark  procession  of 
woods  and  hills,  and  mingle  the  broken  hours 
of  railway  slumber  with  glimpses  of  a  wild 
starlit  landscape.  The  country  retains  in 
dividuality,  and  yet  puts  on  romance,  especi 
ally  the  rough,  shaggy  region  between  Port 
Arthur  and  Winnipeg.  For  four  hundred 
miles  there  is  hardly  a  sign  that  humanity 
exists  on  the  earth's  face,  only  rocks  and 
endless  woods  of  scrubby  pine,  and  the  occa 
sional  strange  gleam  of  water,  and  night 
and  the  wind.  Night-long,  dream  and  reality 


102      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

mingle.  You  may  wake  from  sleep  to  find 
yourself  flying  through  a  region  where  a 
forest  fire  has  passed,  a  place  of  grey  pine- 
trunks,  stripped  of  foliage,  occasionally  waving 
a  naked  bough.  They  appear  stricken  by 
calamity,  intolerably  bare  and  lonely,  gaunt, 
perpetually  protesting,  amazed  and  tragic 
creatures.  We  saw  no  actual  fire  the  night 
I  passed.  But  a  little  while  after  dawn  we 
noticed  on  the  horizon,  fifteen  miles  away,  an 
immense  column  of  smoke.  There  was  little 
wind,  and  it  hung,  as  if  sculptured,  against 
the  grey  of  the  morning;  nor  did  we  lose 
sight  of  it  till  just  before  we  boomed  over  a 
wide,  swift,  muddy  river,  into  the  flat  city  of 
Winnipeg. 

Winnipeg  is  the  West.  It  is  important 
and  obvious  that  in  Canada  there  are  two  or 
three  (some  say  five)  distinct  Canadas.  Even 
if  you  lump  the  French  and  English  together 
as  one  community  in  the  East,  there  remains 
the  gulf  of  the  Great  Lakes.  The  difference 
between  East  and  West  is  possibly  no  greater 
than  that  between  North  and  South  England, 
or  Bavaria  and  Prussia;  but  in  this  country, 
yet  unconscious  of  itself,  there  is  so  much  less 
to  hold  them  together.  The  character  of  the 
land  and  the  people  differs;  their  interests, 


TO  WINNIPEG  103 

as  it  appears  to  them,  are  not  the  same. 
Winnipeg  is  a  new  city.  In  the  archives  at 
Ottawa  is  a  picture  of  Winnipeg  in  1870 — 
Mainstreet,  with  a  few  shacks,  and  the  prairie 
either  end.  Now  her  population  is  a  hundred 
thousand,  and  she  has  the  biggest  this,  that, 
and  the  other  west  of  Toronto.  A  new  city;  a 
little  more  American  than  the  other  Canadian 
cities,  but  not  unpleasantly  so.  The  streets 
are  wider,  and  full  of  a  bustle  which  keeps 
clear  of  hustle.  The  people  have  something 
of  the  free  swing  of  Americans,  without  the 
bumptiousness;  a  tempered  democracy,  a 
mitigated  independence  of  bearing.  The 
manners  of  Winnipeg,  of  the  West,  impress 
the  stranger  as  better  than  those  of  the  East, 
more  friendly,  more  hearty,  more  certain  to 
achieve  graciousness,  if  not  grace.  There  is, 
even,  in  the  architecture  of  Winnipeg,  a  sort 
of  gauche  pride  visible.  It  is  hideous,  of 
course,  even  more  hideous  than  Toronto  or 
Montreal;  but  cheerily  and  windily  so.  There 
is  no  scheme  in  the  city,  and  no  beauty,  but 
it  is  at  least  preferable  to  Birmingham,  less 
dingy,  less  directly  depressing.  It  has  no 
real  slums,  even  though  there  is  poverty  and 
destitution. 

But  there  seems  to  be  a  trifle  more  public 


104      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

spirit  in  the  West  than  the  East.  Perhaps  it 
is  that  in  the  greater  eagerness  and  confidence 
of  this  newer  country  men  have  a  superfluity 
of  energy  and  interest,  even  after  attending 
to  their  own  affairs,  to  give  to  the  community. 
Perhaps  it  is  that  the  West  is  so  young  that 
one  has  a  suspicion  money-making  has  still 
some  element  of  a  child's  game  in  it — its  only 
excuse.  At  any  rate,  whether  because  the 
state  of  affairs  is  yet  unsettled,  or  because  of 
the  invisible  subtle  spirit  of  optimism  that 
blows  through  the  heavily  clustering  telephone- 
wires  and  past  the  neat  little  modern  villas 
and  down  the  solidly  pretentious  streets,  one 
can't  help  finding  a  tiny  hope  that  Winnipeg, 
the  city  of  buildings  and  the  city  of  human 
beings,  may  yet  come  to  something.  It  is  a 
slender  hope,  not  to  be  compared  to  that  of 
the  true  Winnipeg  man,  who,  gazing  on  his 
city,  is  fired  with  the  proud  and  secret  ambition 
that  it  will  soon  be  twice  as  big,  and  after  that 
four  times,  and  then  ten  times  .  .  . 

"Wider  still  and  wider 

Shall  thy  bounds  be  set," 

says  that  hymn  which  is  the  noblest  expression 
of  modern  ambition.  That  hope  is  sure  to  be 
fulfilled.  But  the  other  timid  prayer,  that 
something  different,  something  more  worth 


TO  WINNIPEG  105 

having,  may  come  out  of  Winnipeg,  exists, 
and  not  quite  unreasonably.  That  cannot 
be  said  of  Toronto. 

Winnipeg  is  of  the  West,  new,  vigorous  in 
its  way,  of  unknown  potentialities.  Already 
the  West  has  been  a  nuisance  to  the  East,  in 
the  fight  of  1911  over  Reciprocity  with  the 
United  States.  When  she  gets  a  larger  re 
presentation  in  Parliament,  she  will  be  still 
more  of  a  nuisance.  A  casual  traveller 
cannot  venture  to  investigate  the  beliefs  and 
opinions  of  the  inhabitants  of  a  country,  but 
he  can  record  them  all  the  better,  perhaps, 
for  his  foreign-ness.  It  is  generally  believed 
in  the  West  that  the  East  runs  Canada,  and 
runs  it  for  its  own  advantage.  And  the  East 
means  a  very  few  rich  men;  who  control  the 
big  railways,  the  banks,  and  the  Manufacturers' 
Association,  subscribe  to  both  political  parties, 
and  are  generally  credited  with  complete 
control  over  the  Tariff  and  most  other  Canadian 
affairs.  Whether  or  no  the  Manufacturers' 
Association  does  arrange  the  Tariff  and  control 
the  commerce  of  Canada,  it  is  generally  believed 
to  do  so.  The  only  thing  is  that  its  friends 
say  that  it  acts  in  the  best  interests  of  Canada, 
its  enemies  that  it  acts  in  the  best  interests  of 
the  Manufacturers'  Association.  Among  its 


106      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

enemies  are  many  in  the  West.  The  normal 
Western  life  is  a  lonely  and  individual  one; 
and  a  large  part  of  the  population  has  crossed 
from  the  United  States,  or  belongs  to  that 
great  mass  of  European  immigration  that 
Canada  is  letting  so  blindly  in.  So,  naturally, 
the  Westerner  does  not  feel  the  same  affection 
for  the  Empire  or  for  England  as  the  British 
Canadians  of  the  East,  whose  forefathers 
fought  to  stay  within  the  Empire.  Nor  is  his 
affection  increased  by  the  suspicion  that  the 
Imperial  cry  has  been  used  for  party  purposes. 
He  has  no  use  for  politics  at  Ottawa.  The 
naval  question  is  nothing  to  him.  He  wants 
neither  to  subscribe  money  nor  to  build  ships. 
Europe  is  very  far  away;  and  he  is  too  ignorant 
to  realise  his  close  connection  with  her.  He 
has  strong  views,  however,  on  a  Tariff  which 
only  affects  him  by  perpetually  raising  the 
cost  of  living  and  farming.  The  ideas  of  even 
a  Conservative  in  the  West  about  reducing 
the  Tariff  would  make  an  Eastern  'Liberal5 
die  of  heart-failure.  And  the  Westerner  also 
hates  the  Banks.  The  banking  system  of 
Canada  is  peculiar,  and  throws  the  control 
of  the  banks  into  the  hands  of  a  few  people 
in  the  East,  who  were  felt,  by  the  ever 
optimistic  West,  to  have  shut  down  credit 


TO  WINNIPEG  107 

too    completely    during    the    recent    money 
stringency. 

The  most  interesting  expression  of  the  new 
Western  point  of  view,  and  in  many  ways  the 
most  hopeful  movement  in  Canada,  is  the 
Co-operative  movement  among  the  grain- 
growers  of  the  three  prairie  provinces.  Only 
started  a  few  years  ago,  it  has  grown  rapidly 
in  numbers,  wealth,  power,  and  extent  of 
operations.  So  far  it  has  confined  itself 
politically  to  influencing  provincial  legislatures. 
But  it  has  gradually  attached  itself  to  an 
advanced  Radical  programme  of  a  Chartist 
description.  And  it  is  becoming  powerful. 
Whether  the  outcome  will  be  a  very  desirable 
rejuvenation  of  the  Liberal  Party,  or  the 
creation  of  a  third — perhaps  Radical  Labour 
party,  it  is  hard  to  tell.  At  any  rate,  the 
change  will  come.  And,  just  to  start  with, 
there  will  very  shortly  come  to  the  Eastern 
Powers,  who  threw  out  Reciprocity  with  the 
States  for  the  sake  of  the  Empire,  a  demand 
from  the  West  that  the  preference  to  British 
goods  be  increased  rapidly  till  they  be  allowed 
to  come  in  free,  also  for  the  Empire's  sake. 
Then  the  fun  will  begin. 


X 

OUTSIDE 


X 

OUTSIDE 

I  HAD  visited  New  York,  Boston,  Quebec, 
Montreal,  and  Toronto.  In  Winnipeg  I 
found  a  friend,  who  was  tired  of  cities.  So 
was  I.  In  Canada  the  remedy  lies  close  at 
hand.  We  took  ancient  clothes — and  I,  Ben 
Jonson  and  Jane  Austen  to  keep  me  English 
— and  departed  northward  for  a  lodge,  re 
ported  to  exist  in  a  region  of  lakes  and  hills 
and  forests  and  caribou  and  Indians  and  a  few 
people.  At  first  the  train  sauntered  through 
a  smiling  plain,  intermittently  cultivated,  and 
dotted  with  little  new  villages.  Over  this 
country  are  thrown  little  pools  of  that  flood 
of  European  immigration  that  pours  through 
Winnipeg,  to  remain  separate  or  be  absorbed, 
as  destiny  wills.  The  problem  of  immigration 
here  reveals  that  purposelessness  that  exists 
in  the  affairs  of  Canada  even  more  than  those 
of  other  nations.  The  multitude  from  South 
or  East  Europe  flocks  in.  Some  make  money 
and  return.  The  most  remain,  often  in  in- 

111 


LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

assimilable  lumps.  There  is  every  sign  that 
these  lumps  may  poison  the  health  of  Canada 
as  dangerously  as  they  have  that  of  the 
United  States.  For  Canada  there  is  the  peril 
of  too  large  an  element  of  foreign  blood  and 
traditions  in  a  small  nation  already  little  more 
than  half  composed  of  British  blood  and 
descent.  Nationalities  seem  to  teach  one 
another  only  their  worst.  If  the  Italians  gave 
the  Canadians  of  their  good  manners,  and  the 
Doukhobors  or  Poles  inoculated  them  with 
idealism  and  the  love  of  beauty,  and  received 
from  them  British  romanticism  and  sense  of 
responsibility!  ....  But  they  only  seem  to 
increase  the  anarchy,  these  'foreigners/  and 
to  learn  the  American  twang  and  method  of 
spitting.  And  there  is  the  peril  of  politics. 
Upon  these  scattered  exotic  communities, 
ignorant  of  the  problems  of  their  adopted 
land,  ignorant  even  of  its  language,  swoop 
the  agents  of  political  parties,  with  their 
one  effectual  argument — bad  whisky.  This 
baptism  is  the  immigrants'  only  organised 
welcome  into  their  new  liberties.  Occasion 
ally  some  Church  raises  a  thin  protest.  But 
the  *  Anglo-Saxon'  continues  to  take  up  his 
burden;  and  the  floods  from  Europe  pour  in. 
Canadians  regard  this  influx  with  that  queer 


OUTSIDE  113 

fatalism  which  men  adopt  under  plutocracy. 
"How  could  they  stop  it?  It  pays  the 
steamship  and  railway  companies.  It  may, 
or  may  not,  be  good  for  Canada.  Who  knows  ? 
In  any  case,  it  will  go  on.  Our  masters  wish 
it.  .  .  ." 

It  is  noteworthy  that  Icelanders  are  found 
to  be  far  the  readiest  to  mingle  and  be 
come  Canadian.  After  them,  Norwegians  and 
Swedes.  With  other  immigrant  nationalities, 
hope  lies  with  the  younger  generation;  but 
these  acclimatise  immediately. 

Our  train  was  boarded  by  a  crowd  of 
Ruthenians  or  Galicians,  brown-eyed  and 
beautiful  people,  not  yet  wholly  civilised  out 
of  their  own  costume.  The  girls  chatted  to 
gether  in  a  swift,  lovely  language,  and  the 
children  danced  about,  tossing  their  queer 
brown  mops  of  hair.  They  clattered  out  at 
a  little  village  that  seemed  to  belong  to  them, 
and  stood  waving  and  laughing  us  out  of  sight. 
I  pondered  on  their  feelings,  and  looked  for 
the  name  of  the  little  Utopia  these  aliens  had 
found  in  a  new  world.  It  was  called  (for  the 
railway  companies  name  towns  in  this  country) 
'Milner.' 

We  wandered  into  rougher  country,  where 
the  rocks  begin  to  show  through  the  surface, 


114      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

and  scrub  pine  abounds.  At  the  end  of  our 
side-line  was  another,  and  at  the  end  of  that 
a  village,  the  ultimate  outpost  of  civilisation. 
Here,  on  the  way  back,  some  weeks  later, 
we  had  to  spend  the  night  in  a  little  hotel 
which  'accommodated  transients.'  It  was  a 
rough  affair  of  planks,  inhabited  by  whatever 
wandering  workman  from  construction-camps 
or  other  labour  in  the  region  wanted  shelter 
for  the  night.  You  slept  in  a  sort  of  dormitory, 
each  bed  partitioned  off  from  the  rest  by  walls 
that  were  some  feet  short  of  the  ceiling. 
Swedes,  Germans,  Welsh,  Italians,  and  Poles 
occupied  the  other  partitions,  each  blasphem 
ing  the  works  of  the  Lord  in  his  own  tongue. 
About  midnight  two  pairs  of  feet  crashed  into 
the  cell  opposite  mine;  and  a  high,  sleepless 
voice,  with  an  accent  I  knew,  continued  an 
interminable  argument  on  theology.  "I' 
beginning  wash  word,"  it  proclaimed  with  all 
the  melancholy  of  drunkenness.  The  other 
disputant  was  German  or  Norwegian,  and  un 
interested,  though  very  kindly.  "Right-o!" 
he  said.  "Let's  go  sleep!" 

"What  word?"  pondered  the  Englishman. 
The  Norwegian  suggested  several,  sleepily. 
"Logos,"  wailed  the  other,  "What  Logos?" 
and  wept.  They  persisted,  hour  by  hour, 


OUTSIDE  115 

disconnected  voices  in  the  void  and  darkness, 
lonely  and  chance  companions  in  the  back- 
blocks  of  Canada,  the  one  who  couldn't,  and 
the  one  who  didn't  want  to,  understand.  A 
little  before  dawn  I  woke  again.  That  thin 
voice,  in  patient  soliloquy,  was  discussing 
Female  Suffrage,  going  very  far  down  into  the 
roots  of  the  matter.  I  met  its  owner  next 
morning.  He  was  tall  and  dark  and  lachry 
mose,  with  bloodshot  eyes,  and  breath  that 
stank  of  gin.  He  had  played  scrum-half  for 

College  in  '98;    and  had  prepared  for 

ordination.  >( You'll  understand,  old  man," 
he  said,  "how  out  of  place  I  am  amongst  this 
scum — ol  TroXXot' — we're  not  of  the  ol  iroXXot,  are 
we?"  It  seemed  nicer  to  agree.  "Oh,  I 
know  Greek !" — he  was  too  eagerly  the  gentle 
man — "6  Koalas  Tfjs  aBiKias — the  last  thing  I 
learnt  for  ordination — this  world  of  injustice 
—that's  right,  isn't  it?"  He  laughed  sickly. 
"I  say  as  one  'Varsity  man  to  another — we're 
not  ol  TroXXot  —  could  you  lend  me  some 
money?" 

We  had  to  press  on  thirty  miles  up  a  'light 
railway'  to  a  power-station,  a  settlement  by 
a  waterfall  in  the  wild.  An  engine  and  an 
ancient  luggage-van  conveyed  us.  The  van 
held  us,  three  crates,  and  some  sacks,  four 


116      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

half-breeds  in  black  slouch  hats,  who  curled 
up  on  the  floor  like  dogs  and  slept,  and  an 
aged  Italian.  This  last  knew  no  word  of 
English.  He  had  travelled  all  the  way  from 
Naples,  Heaven  knows  how,  to  find  his  two 
sons,  supposed  to  be  working  in  the  power- 
station.  So  much  was  written  on  a  piece  of 
paper.  We  gave  him  chocolate,  and  at  in 
tervals  I  repeated  to  him  my  only  Italian, 
the  first  line  of  the  Divina  Commedia.  He 
seemed  cheered.  The  van  jolted  on  through 
the  fading  light.  Once  a  man  stepped  out 
on  to  the  track,  stopped  us,  and  clambered 
silently  up.  We  went  on.  "It  was  the  doctor, 
who  had  been  visiting  some  lonely  hut  in 
the  woods.  Later,  another  figure  was  seen 
staggering  between  the  rails.  We  slowed  up, 
shouted,  and  finally  stopped,  butting  him 
gently  on  the  back  with  our  buffers,  and 
causing  him  to  fall.  He  was  very  drunk. 
The  driver  and  the  doctor  helped  him  into 
the  van.  There  he  stood,  and  looking  round, 
said  very  distinctly,  "I  do  not  wish  to  travel 

on  your train."     So  we  put  him  off 

again,  and  proceeded.     Such  is  the  West. 

We  rattled  interminably  through  the  dark 
ness.  The  unpeopled  woods  closed  about  us, 
snatched  with  lean  branches,  and  opened  out 


OUTSIDE  117 

again  to  a  windy  space.  Once  or  twice  the 
ground  fell  away,  and  there  was,  for  a  moment, 
the  mysterious  gleam  and  stir  of  water. 
Canadian  stars  are  remote  and  virginal. 
Everyone  slumbered.  Arrival  at  the  great 
concrete  building  and  the  little  shacks  of  the 
power-station  shook  us  to  our  feet.  The 
Italian  vanished  into  the  darkness.  Whether 
he  found  his  sons  or  fell  into  the  river  no  one 
knew,  and  no  one  seemed  to  care. 

An  Indian,  taciturn  and  Mongolian,  led  us 
on  next  day,  by  boat  and  on  foot,  to  the 
lonely  log-house  we  aimed  at.  It  stood  on 
high  rocks,  above  a  lake  six  miles  by  two. 
There  was  an  Indian  somewhere,  by  a  river 
three  miles  west,  and  a  trapper  to  the  east, 
and  a  family  encamped  on  an  island  in  the 
lake.  Else  nobody. 

It  is  that  feeling  of  fresh  loneliness  that 
impresses  itself  before  any  detail  of  the  wild. 
The  soul — or  the  personality — seems  to  have 
indefinite  room  to  expand.  There  is  no  one 
else  within  reach,  there  never  has  been  any 
one;  no  one  else  is  thinking  of  the  lakes 
and  hills  you  see  before  you.  They  have  no 
tradition,  no  names  even;  they  are  only  pools 
of  water  and  lumps  of  earth,  some  day,  per 
haps  to  be  clothed  with  loves  and  memories 


118      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

and  the  comings  and  goings  of  men,  but  now 
dumbly  waiting  their  Wordsworth  or  their 
Acropolis  to  give  them  individuality,  and  a 
soul.  In  such  country  as  this  there  is  rarefied 
clean  sweetness.  The  air  is  unbreathed,  and 
the  earth  untrodden.  All  things  share  this 
childlike  loveliness,  the  grey  whispering  reeds, 
the  pure  blue  of  the  sky,  the  birches  and  thin 
fir-trees  that  make  up  these  forests,  even  the 
brisk  touch  of  the  clear  water  as  you  dive. 

That  last  sensation,  indeed,  and  none  of 
sight  or  hearing,  has  impressed  itself  as  the 
token  of  Canada,  the  land.  Every  swimmer 
knows  it.  It  is  not  languorous,  like  bathing 
in  a  warm  Southern  sea;  nor  grateful,  like  a 
river  in  a  hot  climate;  nor  strange,  as  the 
ocean  always  is;  nor  startling,  like  very  cold 
water.  But  it  touches  the  body  continually 
with  freshness,  and  it  seems  to  be  charged 
with  a  subtle  and  unexhausted  energy.  It 
is  colourless,  faintly  stinging,  hard  and  grey, 
like  the  rocks  around,  full  of  vitality,  and 
sweet.  It  has  the  tint  and  sensation  of  a  pale 
dawn  before  the  sun  is  up.  Such  is  the  wild  of 
Canada.  It  awaits  the  sun,  the  end  for  which 
Heaven  made  it,  the  blessing  of  civilisation. 
Some  day  it  will  be  sold  in  large  portions, 
and  the  timber  given  to  a  friend  of  's, 


OUTSIDE  119 

and  cut  down  and  made  into  paper,  on  which 
shall  be  printed  the  praise  of  prosperity;  and 
the  land  itself  shall  be  divided  into  town-lots 
and  sold,  and  sub-divided  and  sold  again, 
and  boomed  and  resold,  and  boosted  and 
distributed  to  fishy  young  men  who  will  vend 
it  in  distant  parts  of  the  country;  and  then 
such  portions  as  can  never  be  built  upon  shall 
be  given  in  exchange  for  great  sums  of  money 
to  old  ladies  in  the  quieter  parts  of  England, 
but  the  central  parts  of  towns  shall  remain  in 
the  hands  of  the  wise.  And  on  these  shall 
churches,  hotels,  and  a  great  many  ugly  sky 
scrapers  be  built,  and  hovels  for  the  poor,  and 
houses  for  the  rich,  none  beautiful,  and  there 
shall  ugly  objects  be  manufactured,  rather 
hurriedly,  and  sold  to  the  people  at  more  than 
they  are  worth,  because  similar  and  cheaper 
objects  made  in  other  countries  are  kept  out 
by  a  tariff.  .  .  . 

But  at  present  there  are  only  the  wrinkled, 
grey-blue  lake,  sliding  ever  sideways,  and  the 
grey  rocks,  and  the  cliffs  and  hills,  covered 
with  birch-trees,  and  the  fresh  wind  among  the 
birches,  and  quiet,  and  that  unseizable  virginity. 
Dawn  is  always  a  lost  pearly  glow  in  the  ashen 
skies,  and  sunset  a  multitude  of  softly-tinted 
mists  sliding  before  a  remotely  golden  West. 


120      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

They  follow  one  another  with  an  infinite 
loneliness.  And  there  is  a  far  and  solitary 
beach  of  dark,  golden  sand,  close  by  a  deserted 
Indian  camp,  where,  if  you  drift  quietly 
round  the  corner  in  a  canoe,  you  may  see  a 
bear  stumbling  along,  or  a  great  caribou,  or  a 
little  red  deer  coming  down  to  the  water  to 
drink,  treading  the  wild  edge  of  lake  and 
forest  with  a  light,  secret,  and  melancholy 
grace. 


XI 
THE  PRAIRIES 


XI 

THE  PRAIRIES 

I  PASSED  the  last  few  hours  of  the  west 
ward  journey  from  Winnipeg  to  Regina  in 
daylight,  the  daylight  of  a  wet  and  cheerless 
Sunday.  The  car  was  half-empty,  in  pos 
session  of  a  family  of  small  children  and  some 
theatrical  ladies  and  gentlemen  from  the  United 
States,  travelling  on  'one  night  stands,'  who 
were  collectively  called  'The  World-Renowned 
Barbary  Pirates.'  We  jogged  limply  from 
little  village  to  little  village,  each  composed  of 
little  brown  log-shacks,  with  a  few  buildings 
of  tin  and  corrugated  iron,  and  even  of  brick, 
and  several  grain-elevators.  Each  village — 
I  beg  your  pardon,  'town' — seems  to  be 
exactly  like  the  next.  They  differ  a  little  in 
size,  from  populations  of  100  to  nearly  2000, 
and  in  age,  for  some  have  buildings  dating 
almost  back  to  the  nineteenth  century,  and  a 
few  are  still  mostly  tents.  They  seemed  all  to 
be  emptied  of  their  folk  this  Sabbath  morn; 
though  whether  the  inhabitants  were  at  work, 

123 


LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

or  in  church,  or  had  shot  themselves  from 
depression  induced  by  the  weather,  it  was 
impossible  to  tell.  These  little  towns  do  not 
look  to  the  passer-by  comfortable  as  homes. 
Partly,  there  is  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing 
your  village  from  the  others.  It  would  be  as 
bad  as  being  married  to  a  Jap.  And  then 
towns  should  be  on  hills  or  in  valleys,  however 
small.  A  town  dumped  down,  apparently  by 
chance,  on  a  flat  expanse  wears  the  same  air 
of  discomfort  as  a  man  trying  to  make  his 
bed  on  a  level,  unyielding  surface  such  as  a 
lawn  or  pavement.  He  feels  hopelessly  inci 
dental  to  the  superficies  of  the  earth.  He  is 
aware  that  the  human  race  has  thigh-bones.  .  .  . 
Yet  this  country  is  not  quite  flat,  as  I  had 
been  led  to  expect.  It  does  not  give  you  that 
feeling  of  a  plain  you  have  in  parts  of  Lom- 
bardy  and  Holland  and  Belgium.  This  may 
have  been  due  to  the  grey  mist  and  drizzle 
which  curtained  off  the  horizon.  But  the 
land  was  always  very  slightly  rolling,  and 
sometimes  almost  as  uneven  as  a  Surrey 
common.  At  first  it  seemed  to  be  given  to 
mixed  farming  a  good  deal;  afterwards  to 
wheat,  oats,  and  barley.  But  a  great  part  is 
uncultivated  prairie-land,  grass,  with  sparse 
bushes  and  patches  of  brushwood  and  a  few 


THE  PRAIRIES 

rare  trees,  and  continual  clumps  of  large 
golden  daisies.  Occasional  rough  black  roads 
wind  through  the  brush  and  into  the  towns, 
and  die  into  grass  tracks  along  the  wire  fences. 
The  day  I  went  through,  the  interminable, 
oblique,  thin  rain  took  the  gold  out  of  the 
wheat  and  the  brown  from  the  distant  fields 
and  bushes,  and  drabbed  all  the  colours 
in  the  grass.  The  children  in  the  car  cried 
to  each  other  with  the  shrill,  sick  persist 
ency  of  tired  childhood,  "How  many  inches 
to  Regina?"  "A  Billion."  "A  Trillion." 
"A  Shillion."  The  Barbary  Pirates  laughed 
incessantly.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the 
prairie  would  be  a  lonely  place  to  live  in, 
especially  if  it  rained.  But  the  people  who 
have  lived  there  for  years  tell  me  they  get 
very  homesick  if  they  go  away  for  a  time. 
Valleys  and  hills  seem  to  them  petty,  fretful, 
unlovable.  The  magic  of  the  plains  has  them 
in  thrall. 

Certainly  there  is  a  little  more  democracy 
in  the  west  of  Canada  than  the  east;  the 
communities  seem  a  little  less  incapable  of 
looking  after  themselves.  Out  in  the  west 
they  are  erecting  not  despicable  public  build 
ings,  founding  universities,  running  a  few 
public  services.  That  ' polities'  has  a  voice 


126      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

in  these  undertakings  does  not  make  them 
valueless.  There  are  perceptible  in  the 
prairies,  among  all  the  corruption,  irresponsi 
bility,  and  disastrous  individualism,  some  faint 
signs  of  the  sense  of  the  community.  Take  a 
very  good  test,  the  public  libraries,  As  you 
traverse  Canada  from  east  to  west  they 
steadily  improve.  You  begin  in  the  city  of 
Montreal,  which  is  unable  to  support  one,  and 
pass  through  the  dingy  rooms  and  inadequate 
intellectual  provision  of  Toronto  and  Winnipeg. 
After  that  the  libraries  and  reading-rooms, 
small  for  the  smaller  cities,  are  cleaner  and 
better  kept,  show  signs  of  care  and  intelligence; 
until  at  last,  in  Calgary,  you  find  a  very  neat 
and  carefully  kept  building,  stocked  with  an 
immense  variety  of  periodicals,  and  an  admi 
rably  chosen  store  of  books,  ranging  from  the 
classics  to  the  most  utterly  modern  literature. 
Few  large  English  towns  could  show  anything 
as  good.  Cross  the  Rockies  to  Vancouver, 
and  you're  back  among  dirty  walls,  grubby 
furniture,  and  inadequate  literature  again. 
There's  nothing  in  Canada  to  compare  with 
the  magnificent  libraries  little  New  Zealand 
can  show.  But  Calgary  is  hopeful. 

These  cities  grow  in  population  with  un 
imaginable   velocity.     From  thirty  to  thirty 


THE  PRAIRIES 

thousand  in  fifteen  years  is  the  usual  rate. 
Pavements  are  laid  down,  stores  and  bigger 
stores  and  still  bigger  stores  spring  up.  Trams 
buzz  along  the  streets  towards  the  unregarded 
horizon  that  lies  across  the  end  of  most  roads 
in  these  flat,  geometrically  planned,  prairie- 
towns.  Probably  a  Chinese  quarter  appears, 
and  the  beginnings  of  slums.  Expensive  and 
pleasant  small  dwelling-houses  fringe  the  out 
skirts;  and  rents  being  so  high,  great  edifices 
of  residential  flats  rival  the  great  stores.  In 
other  streets,  or  even  sandwiched  between  the 
finer  buildings,  are  dingy  and  decaying  saloons, 
and  innumerable  little  booths  and  hovels 
where  adventurers  deal  dishonestly  in  Real 
Estate,  and  Employment  Bureaux.  And  there 
are  the  vast  erections  of  the  great  corporations, 
Hudson's  Bay  Company,  and  the  banks  and 
the  railways,  and,  sometimes  almost  equally 
impressive,  the  public  buildings.  There  are 
the  beginnings  of  very  costly  universities; 
and  Regina  has  built  a  superb  great  House 
of  Parliament,  with  a  wide  sheet  of  water  in 
front  of  it,  a  noble  building. 

The  inhabitants  of  these  cities  are  proud 
of  them,  and  envious  of  each  other  with  a 
bitter  rivalry.  They  do  not  love  their  cities 
as  a  Manchester  man  loves  Manchester  or  a 


128      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

Mlinchener  Munich,  for  they  have  probably 
lately  arrived  in  them,  and  will  surely  pass  on 
soon.  But  while  they  are  there  they  love  them, 
and  with  no  silent  love.  They  boost.  To  boost 
is  to  commend  outrageously.  And  each  cries 
up  his  own  city,  both  from  pride,  it  would 
appear,  and  for  profit.  For  the  fortunes  of 
Newville  are  very  really  the  fortunes  of  its 
inhabitants.  From  the  successful  speculator, 
owner  of  whole  blocks,  to  the  waiter  bringing 
you  a  Martini,  who  has  paid  up  a  fraction  of 
the  cost  of  a  quarter-share  in  a  town-lot — 
all  are  the  richer,  as  well  as  the  prouder,  if 
Newville  grows.  It  is  imperative  to  praise 
Edmonton  in  Edmonton.  But  it  is  sudden 
death  to  praise  it  in  Calgary.  The  partisans 
of  each  city  proclaim  its  superiority  to  all 
the  others  in  swiftness  of  growth,  future 
population,  size  of  buildings,  price  of  land — 
by  all  recognised  standards  of  excellence.  I 
travelled  from  Edmonton  to  Calgary  in  the 
company  of  a  citizen  of  Edmonton  and  a 
citizen  of  Calgary.  Hour  after  hour  they 
disputed.  Land  in  Calgary  had  risen  from 
five  dollars  to  three  hundred;  but  in 
Edmonton  from  three  to  five  hundred. 
Edmonton  had  grown  from  thirty  persons  to 
forty  thousand  in  twenty  years;  but  Calgary 


THE  PRAIRIES  129 

from  twenty  to  thirty  thousand  in  twelve.  .  .  . 
"Where" — as  a  respite— "did  I  come  from?" 
I  had  to  tell  them,  not  without  shame,  that 
my  own  town  of  Grantchester,  having  num 
bered  three  hundred  at  the  time  of  Julius 
Caesar's  landing,  had  risen  rapidly  to  nearly 
four  by  Doomsday  Book,  but  was  now  declined 
to  three-fifty.  They  seemed  perplexed  and 
angry. 

Sentimental  people  in  the  East  will  talk  of 
the  romance  of  the  West,  and  of  these  simple, 
brave  pioneers  who  have  wrung  a  living  from 
the  soil,  and  are  properly  proud  of  the  rude 
little  towns  that  mark  their  conquest  over 
nature.  That  may  apply  to  the  frontiers  of 
civilisation  up  North,  but  the  prairie-towns 
have  progressed  beyond  all  that.  A  few  of 
the  old  pioneers  of  the  West  survive  to  watch 
with  startled  eyes  the  wonderful  fruits  of 
the  seed  they  sowed.  Such  are  among  the 
finest  people  in  Canada,  very  different  from 
the  younger  generation,  with  wider  interests, 
good  talkers,  the  best  of  company.  From 
them,  and  from  records,  one  can  learn  of  the 
early  settlers  and  the  beginnings  of  the  North- 
West  Mounted  Police.  The  police  seem  to 
have  been  superb.  For  no  great  reward,  but 
the  love  of  the  thing,  they  imposed  order  and 


130      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

fairness  upon  half  a  continent.  The  Indians 
trusted  them  utterly;  they  were  without  fear. 
A  store  stands  now  in  Calgary  where  forty 
years  ago  a  policeman  was  shot  to  death  by  a 
murderer,  followed  over  a  thousand  miles. 
He  knew  that  the  criminal  would  shoot;  but 
it  was  the  rule  of  the  Mounted  Police  not  to 
fire  first.  Wounded,  he  killed  his  man,  then 
died.  And  there  was  the  case  of  the  desperado 
who  crossed  the  border,  and  was  eventually 
captured  and  held  by  an  immense  force  of 
American  police  and  military.  They  awaited 
a  regiment  of  the  Police  to  conduct  the  villain 
back  to  trial.  Two  appeared,  and  being  asked, 
"Where  is  the  escort?"  replied,  "We  are  the 
escort,"  and  started  back  their  five  hundred 
miles  ride  with  the  murderer  in  tow.  And 
there  were  the  two  who  pursued  a  horse-thief 
from  Dawson  down  to  Minneapolis,  caught  him, 
and  took  him  back  to  Dawson  to  be  hanged. 
And  there  was  the  settler,  who  .  .  . 

The  tragedy  of  the  West  is  that  these  men 
have  passed,  and  that  what  they  lived  and 
died  to  secure  for  their  race  is  now  the  founda 
tion  for  a  gigantic  national  gambling  of  a 
most  unprofitable  and  disastrous  kind.  Hordes 
of  people — who  mostly  seem  to  come  from  the 
great  neighbouring  Commonwealth,  and  are 


THE  PRAIRIES  131 

inspired  with  the  national  hunger  for  getting 
rich  quickly  without  deserving  it — prey  on 
the  community  by  their  dealings  in  what  is 
humorously  called  'Real  Estate.'  For  them 
our  fathers  died.  What  a  sowing,  and  what  a 
harvest!  And  where  good  men  worked  or 
perished  is  now  a  row  of  little  shops,  all 
devoted  to  the  sale  of  town-lots  in  some  distant 
spot  that  must  infallibly  become  a  great  city 
in  the  next  two  years,  and  in  the  doorway  of 
each  lounges  a  thin-chested,  much-spitting 
youth,  with  a  flabby  face,  shifty  eyes,  and  an 
inhuman  mouth,  who  invites  you  continually, 
with  the  most  raucous  of  American  accents, 
to  "step  inside  and  examine  our  Praposition." 


XII 

THE  INDIANS 


XII 
THE  INDIANS 

WHEN  I  was  in  the  East,  I  got  to  know  a  man 
who  had  spent  many  years  of  his  life  living 
among  the  Indians.  He  showed  me  his  photo 
graphs.  He  explained  one,  of  an  old  woman. 
He  said,  "They  told  me  there  was  an  old 
woman  in  the  camp  called  Laughing  Earth. 
When  I  heard  the  name,  I  just  said,  'Take  me 
to  her!'  She  wouldn't  be  photographed. 
She  kept  turning  her  back  to  me.  I  just 
picked  up  a  clod  and  plugged  it  at  her,  and 
said,  'Turn  round,  Laughing  Earth!'  She 
turned  half  round,  and  grinned.  She  was  a 
game  old  bird !  I  joshed  all  the  boys  here 
Laughing  Earth  was  my  girl — till  they  saw 
her  photo !" 

There  stands  Laughing  Earth,  in  brightly- 
coloured  petticoat  and  blouse,  her  grey  hair 
blowing  about  her.  Her  back  is  towards  you, 
but  her  face  is  turned,  and  scarcely  hidden 
by  a  hand  that  is  raised  with  all  the  coyness 
of  seventy  years.  Laughter  shines  from  the 

135 


136      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

infinitely  lined,  round,  brown  cheeks,  and 
from  the  mouth,  and  from  the  dancing  eyes, 
and  floods  and  spills  over  from  each  of 
the  innumerable  wrinkles.  Laughing  Earth — 
there  is  endless  vitality  in  that  laughter.  The 
hand  and  face  and  the  old  body  laugh.  No 
skinny,  intellectual  mirth,  affecting  but  the 
lips!  It  was  the  merriment  of  an  apple 
bobbing  on  the  bough,  or  a  brown  stream 
running  over  rocks,  or  any  other  gay  creature 
of  earth.  And  with  all  was  a  great  dignity, 
invulnerable  to  clods,  and  a  kindly  and  noble 
beauty.  By  the  light  of  that  laughter  much 
becomes  clear — the  right  place  of  man  upon 
earth,  the  entire  suitability  in  life  of  very 
brightly-coloured  petticoats,  and  the  fact  that 
old  age  is  only  a  different  kind  of  a  merriment 
from  youth,  and  a  wiser. 

And  by  that  light  the  fragments  of  this 
pathetic  race  become  more  comprehensible, 
and,  perhaps,  less  pathetic.  The  wanderer 
in  Canada  sees  them  from  time  to  time,  the 
more  the  further  west  he  goes,  irrelevant  and 
inscrutable  figures.  In  the  east,  -French  and 
Scotch  half-breeds  frequent  the  borders  of 
civilisation.  In  any  western  town  you  may 
chance  on  a  brave  and  his  wife  and  a  baby, 
resplendent  in  gay  blankets  and  trappings, 


THE   INDIANS  137 

sliding  gravely  through  the  hideousness  of  the 
new  order  that  has  supplanted  them.  And 
there  will  be  a  few  half-breeds  loitering  at 
the  corners  of  the  streets.  These  people  of 
mixed  race  generally  seem  unfortunate  in  the 
first  generation.  A  few  of  the  older  ones, 
the  'old-timers/  have  'made  good/  and 
hold  positions  in  the  society  for  which  they 
pioneered.  But  most  appear  to  inherit 
the  weaknesses  of  both  sides.  Drink  does  its 
work.  And  the  nobler  ones,  like  the  tragic 
figure  of  that  poetess  who  died  recently, 
Pauline  Johnson,  seem  fated  to  be  at  odds 
with  the  world.  The  happiest,  whether  Indian 
or  half-breed,  are  those  who  live  beyond  the 
ever-advancing  edges  of  cultivation  and  order, 
and  force  a  livelihood  from  nature  by  hunting 
and  fishing.  Go  anywhere  into  the  wild,  and 
you  will  find  in  little  clearings,  by  lake  or 
river,  a  dilapidated  hut  with  a  family  of  these 
solitaries,  friendly  with  the  pioneers  or  trappers 
around,  ready  to  act  as  guide  on  hunt  or  trail. 
The  Government,  extraordinarily  painstaking 
and  well-intentioned,  has  established  Indian 
schools,  and  trains  some  of  them  to  take 
their  places  in  the  civilisation  we  have  built. 
Not  the  best  Indians  these,  say  lovers  of 
the  race.  I  have  met  them,  as  clerks  or 


138      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

stenographers,  only  distinguishable  from  their 
neighbours  by  a  darker  skin  and  a  sweeter 
voice  and  manner.  And  in  a  generation  or 
two,  I  suppose,  the  strain  mingles  and  is  lost. 
So  we  finish  with  kindness  what  our  fathers 
began  with  war. 

The  Government,  and  others,  have  scien 
tifically  studied  the  history  and  characteristics 
of  the  Indians,  and  written  them  down  in 
books,  lest  it  be  forgotten  that  human  beings 
could  be  so  extraordinary.  They  were  a 
wandering  race,  it  appears,  of  many  tribes 
and,  even,  languages.  Not  apt  to  arts  or 
crafts,  they  had,  and  have,  an  unrefined 
delight  in  bright  colours.  They  enjoyed  a 
'Nature-Worship,'  believed  rather  dimly  in 
a  presiding  Power,  and  very  definitely  in 
certain  ethical  and  moral  rules.  One  of  their 
incomprehensible  customs  was  that  at  certain 
intervals  the  tribe  divided  itself  into  two 
factitious  divisions,  each  headed  by  various 
chiefs,  and  gambled  furiously  for  many  days, 
one  party  against  the  other.  They  were 
pugnacious,  and  in  their  .uncivilised  way 
fought  frequent  wars.  They  were  remark 
ably  loyal  to  each  other,  and  treacherous  to 
the  foe;  brave,  and  very  stoical.  "Monog 
amy  was  very  prevalent."  It  is  remarked 


THE  INDIANS  139 

that  husbands  and  wives  were  very  fond  of 
each  other,  and  the  great  body  of  scientific 
opinion  favours  the  theory  that  mothers  were 
much  attached  to  their  children.  Most  tribes 
were  very  healthy,  and  some  fine-looking. 
Such  were  the  remarkable  people  who  hunted, 
fought,  feasted,  and  lived  here  until  the  light 
came,  and  all  was  changed.  Other  qualities 
they  had  even  more  remarkable  to  a  European, 
such  as  utter  honesty,  and  complete  devo 
tion  to  the  truth  among  themselves.  Civil 
isation,  disease,  alcohol,  and  vice  have  reduced 
them  to  a  few  scattered  communities  and 
some  stragglers,  and  a  legend,  the  admiration 
of  boyhood.  Boys  they  wTere,  pugnacious, 
hunters,  loyal,  and  cruel,  older  than  the 
merrier  children  of  the  South  Seas,  younger 
and  simpler  than  the  weedy,  furtive,  acquisitive 
youth  who  may  figure  our  age  and  type.  "  We 
must  be  a  Morally  Higher  race  than  the 
Indians,"  said  an  earnest  American  business 
man  to  me  in  Saskatoon,  "because  we  have 
Survived  them.  The  Great  Darwin  has 
proved  it."  I  visited,  later,  a  community 
of  our  Moral  Inferiors,  an  Indian  'reserva 
tion'  under  the  shade  of  the  Rockies.  The 
Government  has  put  aside  various  tracts 
of  land  where  the  Indians  may  conduct 


140      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

their  lives  in  something  of  their  old  way, 
and  stationed  in  each  an  agent  to  protect 
their  interests.  For  every  white  man,  as 
an  agent  told  me,  "thinks  an  Indian  legiti 
mate  prey  for  all  forms  of  cheating  and 
robbery." 

The  reservations  are  the  better  in  proportion 
as  they  are  further  from  the  towns  and  cities. 
The  one  I  saw  was  peopled  by  a  few  hundred 
Stonies,  one  of  the  finest  and  most  untouched 
of  the  tribes.  Of  these  Laughing  Earth  had 
made  one,  but  alas!  a  few  years  before  she 
had  become 

"a  portion  of  the  mirthfulness 
That  once  she  made  more  mirthful." 

The  Indians  occupy  themselves  with  a 
little  farming  and  hunting,  and  with  expedi 
tions,  and  live  in  two  or  three  small  scattered 
villages  of  huts  and  tents.  But  the  centre  of 
the  community  is  the  little  white-washed  house 
where  the  agent  has  his  office.  Here  we  sat, 
he  and  I,  and  talked,  behind  the  counter. 
The  agent  is  father,  mother,  clergyman,  tutor, 
physician,  solicitor,  and  banker  to  the  Indians. 
They  wandered  in  and  out  of  the  place  with 
their  various  requests.  The  most  part  of 
them  could  not  talk  English,  but  there  was 


THE  INDIANS  141 

generally  some  young  Indian  to  interpret. 
An  old  chief  entered.  His  grey  hair  curled 
down  to  his  broad  shoulders.  He  had  a 
noble  forehead,  brown,  steady  eyes,  a  thin, 
humorous  mouth.  His  cow  had  been  run 
over  by  the  C.P.R.  What  was  to  be  done? 
and  how  much  would  he  get?  The  affair 
was  discussed  through  an  interpreter,  a 
Canadianised  young  Indian  in  trousers,  who 
spat.  Some  of  the  men,  especially  the  older 
ones,  have  wonderful  dignity  and  beauty  of 
face  and  body.  Their  physique  is  superb; 
their  features  shaped  and  lined  by  weather 
and  experience  into  a  Roman  nobility  that 
demands  respect.  Several  such  passed  through. 
Then  came  an  old  woman,  wizened  and 
loquacious,  bent  double  by  the  sack  of  her 
weekly  provision  of  meat  and  flour.  She 
required  oil,  was  given  it,  secreted  it  in  some 
cranny  of  the  many-coloured  bundle  that 
she  was,  and  staggered  creakily  off  again. 

The  office  emptied  for  a  while.  Then 
drifted  in  a  younger  man,  tall,  with  that 
brown,  dog-like  expression  of  simplicity  many 
Indians  wear.  He  was  covered  by  a  large 
grey -coloured  blanket,  over  his  other  clothes. 
He  puffed  at  a  pipe  and  stared  out  of  the 
window.  The  agent  and  I  continued  talking. 


142      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

You  must  never  hurry  an  Indian.  Presently 
he  gave  a  little  grunt.  The  agent  said, 
"  Well,  John  ?  "  John  went  on  smoking.  Five 
minutes  later,  in  the  middle  of  our  conversa 
tion,  John  said  suddenly,  "Salt."  He  was 
staring  inexpressively  at  the  ceiling.  "Why, 
John,"  said  the  agent,  "I  gave  you  enough 
salts  on  Thursday  to  last  you  a  week."  John 
directed  his  gaze  on  us,  and  smoked  dumbly. 
"Still  the  stomach?"  inquired  the  agent, 
genially.  John's  expression  became  gradu 
ally  grimmer,  and  he  moved  one  hand  slowly 
across  till  it  rested  on  his  stomach.  An 
impassive,  significant  hand.  After  a  courteous 
pause  the  agent  rose,  poured  some  Epsom 
salts  out  of  a  large  jar,  wrapped  them  in  paper, 
and  handed  them  over.  John  secreted  them 
dispassionately  in  some  pouch  among  the 
skins  and  blankets  that  wrapped  him  in.  We 
went  back  to  our  conversation.  Five  min 
utes  after  he  grunted,  suddenly.  Again 
five  minutes,  and  he  departed.  His  wife — a 
plump,  patient  young  woman — and  his  solemn- 
;eyed,  fat,  ridiculous  son  of  four,  were  sitting 
stolidly  on  the  grass  outside.  It  obviously 
;made  no  difference  if  he  took  one  hour  or 
seven  over  his  business.  They  mounted  their 
tiny  ponies  and  trotted  briskly  off.  .  .  . 


THE  INDIANS  143 

I  suppose  one  is  apt  to  be  sentimental 
about  these  good  people.  They're  really  so 
picturesque;  they  trail  clouds  of  Fenimore 
Cooper;  and  they  seem,  for  all  their  unfitness, 
reposefully  more  in  touch  with  permanent 
things  than  the  America  that  has  succeeded 
them.  And  it  is  interesting  to  watch  our 
pathetic  efforts  to  prevent  or  disarm  the 
effects  of  ourselves.  What  will  happen? 
Shall  we  preserve  these  few  bands  of  them, 
untouched,  to  succeed  us,  ultimately,  when 
the  grasp  of  our  c civilisation'  weakens,  and 
our  transient  anarchy  in  these  wilder  lands 
recedes  once  more  before  the  older  anarchy  of 
Nature?  Or  will  they  be  entirely  swallowed 
by  that  ugliness  of  shops  and  trousers  with 
which  we  enchain  the  earth,  and  become  a 
memory  and  less  than  a  memory?  They 
are  that  already.  The  Indians  have  passed. 
They  left  no  arts,  no  tradition,  no  buildings 
or  roads  or  laws;  only  a  story  or  two,  and 
a  few  names,  strange  and  beautiful.  The 
ghosts  of  the  old  chiefs  must  surely  chuckle 
when  they  note  that  the  name  by  which 
Canada  has  called  her  capital  and  the  centre 
of  her  political  life,  Ottawa,  is  an  Indian 
name  which  signifies  'buying  and  selling.' 
And  the  wanderer  in  this  land  will  always 


144      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

be  remarking  an  unexplained  fragrance 
about  the  place-names,  as  from  some  flower 
which  has  withered,  and  which  he  does  not 
know. 


XIII 
THE   ROCKIES 


XIII 
THE  ROCKIES 

AT  Calgary,  if  you  can  spare  a  minute  from 
more  important  matters,  slip  beyond  the 
hurrying  white  city,  climb  the  golf  links,  and 
gaze  west.  A  low  bank  of  dark  clouds  dis 
turbs  you  by  the  fixity  of  its  outline.  It  is 
the  Rockies,  seventy  miles  away.  On  a  good 
day,  it  is  said,  they  are  visible  twice  as  far,  so 
clear  and  serene  is  this  air.  Five  hundred 
miles  west  is  the  coast  of  British  Columbia, 
a  region  with  a  different  climate,  different 
country,  and  different  problems.  It  is  cut 
off  from  the  prairies  by  vast  tracts  of 
wild  country  and  uninhabitable  ranges.  For 
nearly  two  hundred  miles  the  train  pants 
through  the  homeless  grandeur  of  the  Rockies 
and  the  Selkirks.  Four  or  five  hotels,  a  few 
huts  or  tents,  and  a  rare  mining-camp — that 
is  all  the  habitation  in  many  thousands  of 
square  miles.  Little  even  of  that  is  visible 
from  the  train.  That  is  one  of  the  chief  differ 
ences  between  the  effect  of  the  Rockies  and 

147 


148      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

that  of  the  Alps.  There,  you  are  always  in 
sight  of  a  civilisation  which  has  nestled  for 
ages  at  the  feet  of  those  high  places.  They 
stand,  enrobed  with  worship,  and  grander  by 
contrast  with  the  lives  of  men.  These  un- 
memoried  heights  are  inhuman — or  rather, 
irrelevant  to  humanity.  No  recorded  Hannibal 
has  struggled  across  them;  their  shadow  lies 
on  no  remembered  literature.  They  acknow 
ledge  claims  neither  of  the  soul  nor  of  the 
body  of  man.  He  is  a  stranger,  neither 
Nature's  enemy  nor  her  child.  She  is  there 
alone,  scarcely  a  unity  in  the  heaped  confusion 
of  these  crags,  almost  without  grandeur  among 
the  chaos  of  earth. 

Yet  this  horrid  and  solitary  wildness  is  but 
one  aspect.  There  is  beauty  here,  at  length, 
for  the  first  time  in  Canada,  the  real  beauty 
that  is  always  too  sudden  for  mortal  eyes,  and 
brings  pain  with  its  comfort.  The  Rockies 
have  a  remoter,  yet  a  kindlier,  beauty  than 
the  Alps.  Their  rock  is  of  a  browner  colour, 
and  such  rugged  peaks  and  crowns  as  do 
not  attain  snow  continually  suggest  gigantic 
castellations,  or  the  ramparts  of  Titans.  East 
ward,  the  foothills  are  few  and  low,  and  the 
mountains  stand  superbly.  The  heart  lifts 
to  see  them.  They  guard  the  sunset.  Into 


THE  ROCKIES  149 

this  rocky  wilderness  you  plunge,  and  toil 
through  it  hour  by  hour,  viewing  it  from  the 
rear  of  the  Observation-Car.  The  Observa 
tion-Car  is  a  great  invention  of  the  new  world. 
At  the  end  of  the  train  is  a  compartment  with 
large  windows,  and  a  little  platform  behind 
it,  roofed  over,  but  exposed  otherwise  to 
the  air.  On  this  platform  are  sixteen  little 
perches,  for  which  you  fight  with  Americans. 
Victorious,  you  crouch  on  one,  and  watch  the 
ever-receding  panorama  behind  the  train.  It 
is  an  admirable  way  of  viewing  scenery.  But 
a  day  of  being  perpetually  drawn  backwards 
at  a  great  pace  through  some  of  the  grandest 
mountains  in  the  world  has  a  queer  effect. 
Like  life,  it  leaves  you  with  a  dizzy  irritation. 
For,  as  in  life,  you  never  see  the  glories  till 
they  are  past,  and  then  they  vanish  with 
incredible  rapidity.  And  if  you  crane  to  see 
the  dwindling  further  peaks,  you  miss  the  new 
splendours. 

The  day  I  went  through  most  of  the  Rockies 
was,  by  some  standards,  a  bad  one  for  the 
view.  Rain  scudded  by  in  forlorn,  grey 
showers,  and  the  upper  parts  of  the  mountains 
were  wrapped  in  cloud,  which  was  but  rarely 
blown  aside  to  reveal  the  heights.  Sublimity, 
therefore,  was  left  to  the  imagination;  but 


150      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

desolation  was  most  vividly  present.  In  no 
weather  could  the  impression  of  loneliness  be 
stronger.  The  pines  drooped  and  sobbed. 
Cascades,  born  somewhere  in  the  dun  firma 
ment  above,  dropped  down  the  mountain 
sides  in  ever-growing  white  threads.  The 
rivers  roared  and  plunged  with  aimless  passion 
down  the  ravines.  Stray  little  clouds,  left 
behind  when  the  wrack  lifted  a  little,  ran 
bleating  up  and  down  the  forlorn  hill-sides. 
More  often,  the  clouds  trailed  along  the  valleys, 
a  long  procession  of  shrouded,  melancholy 
figures,  seeming  to  pause,  as  with  an  indeter 
minate,  tragic,  vain  gesture,  before  passing 
out  of  sight  up  some  ravine. 

Yet  desolation  is  not  the  final  impression 
that  will  remain  of  the  Rockies  and  the 
Selkirks.  I  was  advised  by  various  people 
to  'stop  off'  at  Banff  and  at  Lake  Louise,  in 
the  Rockies.  I  did  so.  They  are  supposed 
to  be  equally  the  beauty  spots  of  the  mountains. 
How  perplexing  it  is  that  advisers  are  always 
so  kindly  and  willing  to  help,  and  always  so 
undiscriminating.  It  is  equally  disastrous  to 
be  a  sceptic  and  to  be  credulous.  Banff  is  an 
ordinary  little  tourist  resort  in  mountainous 
country,  with  hills  and  a  stream  and  snow- 
peaks  beyond.  Beautiful  enough,  and  in- 


THE  ROCKIES  151 

vigorating.  But  Lake  Louise — Lake  Louise 
is  of  another  world.  Imagine  a  little  round 
lake  6000  feet  up,  a  mile  across,  closed  in  by 
great  cliffs  of  brown  rock,  round  the  shoulders 
of  which  are  thrown  mantles  of  close  dark 
pine.  At  one  end  the  lake  is  fed  by  a  vast 
glacier,  and  its  milky  tumbling  stream;  and 
the  glacier  climbs  to  snowfields  of  one  of  the 
highest  and  loveliest  peaks  in  the  Rockies, 
which  keeps  perpetual  guard  over  the  scene. 
To  this  place  you  go  up  three  or  four  miles 
from  the  railway.  There  is  the  hotel  at  one 
end  of  the  lake,  facing  the  glacier;  else  no 
sign  of  humanity.  From  the  windows  you 
may  watch  the  water  and  the  peaks  all  day, 
and  never  see  the  same  view  twice.  In  the 
lake,  ever-changing,  is  Beauty  herself,  as 
nearly  visible  to  mortal  eyes  as  she  may  ever 
be.  The  water,  beyond  the  flowers,  is  green, 
always  a  different  green.  Sometimes  it  is 
tranquil,  glassy,  shot  with  blue,  of  a  peacock 
tint.  Then  a  little  wind  awakes  in  the  dis 
tance,  and  ruffles  the  surface,  yard  by  yard, 
covering  it  with  a  myriad  tiny  wrinkles,  till 
half  the  lake  is  milky  emerald,  while  the  rest 
still  sleeps.  And,  at  length,  the  whole  is 
astir,  and  the  sun  catches  it,  and  Lake  Louise 
is  a  web  of  laughter,  the  opal  distillation  of  all 


LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

the  buds  of  all  the  spring.  On  either  side 
go  up  the  dark  processional  pines,  mounting 
to  the  sacred  peaks,  devout,  kneeling,  motion 
less,  in  an  ecstasy  of  homely  adoration,  like 
the  donors  and  their  families  in  a  Flemish 
picture.  Among  these  you  may  wander  for 
hours  by  little  rambling  paths,  over  white 
and  red  and  golden  flowers,  and,  continually, 
you  spy  little  lakes,  hidden  away,  each  a  shy, 
soft  jewel  of  a  new  strange  tint  of  green  or 
blue,  mutable  and  lovely.  .  .  .  And  beyond 
all  is  the  glacier  and  the  vast  fields  and  peaks 
of  eternal  snow. 

If  you  watch  the  great  white  cliff,  from  the 
foot  of  which  the  glacier  flows — seven  miles 
away,  but  it  seems  two — you  will  sometimes 
see  a  little  puff  of  silvery  smoke  go  up,  thin, 
and  vanish.  A  few  seconds  later  comes  the 
roar  of  terrific,  distant  thunder.  The  moun 
tains  tower  and  smile  unregarding  in  the  sun. 
It  was  an  avalanche.  And  if  you  climb  any 
of  the  ridges  or  peaks  around,  there  are  dis 
covered  other  valleys  and  heights  and  ranges, 
wild  and  desert,  stretching  endlessly  away. 
As  day  draws  to  an  end  the  shadows  on  the 
snow  turn  bluer,  the  crying  of  innumerable 
waters  hushes,  and  the  immense,  bare  ramparts 
of  westward-facing  rock  that  guard  the  great 


THE  ROCKIES  153 

valley  win  a  rich,  golden-brown  radiance. 
Long  after  the  sun  has  set  they  seem  to  give 
forth  the  splendour  of  the  day,  and  the  tran 
quillity  of  their  centuries,  in  undiminished 
fulness.  They  have  that  other-worldly 
serenity  which  a  perfect  old  age  possesses. 
And  as  with  a  perfect  old  age,  so  here,  the 
colour  and  the  light  ebb  so  gradually  out  of 
things  that  you  could  swear  nothing  of  the 
radiance  and  glory  gone  up  to  the  very  moment 
before  the  dark. 

It  was  on  such  a  height,  and  at  some  such 
hour  as  this,  that  I  sat  and  considered  the 
nature  of  the  country  in  this  continent.  There 
was  perceptible,  even  here,  though  less  urgent 
than  elsewhere,  the  strangeness  I  had  noticed 
in  woods  by  the  St  Lawrence,  and  on  the 
banks  of  the  Delaware  (where  are  red-haired 
girls  who  sing  at  dawn),  and  in  British  Colum 
bia,  and  afterwards  among  the  brown  hills  and 
colossal  trees  of  California,  but  especially  by 
that  lonely  golden  beach  in  Manitoba,  where 
the  high-stepping  little  brown  deer  run  down 
to  drink,  and  the  wild  geese  through  the 
evening  go  flying  and  crying.  It  is  an  empty 
land.  To  love  the  country  here — mountains 
are  worshipped,  not  loved — is  like  embracing 
a  wraith.  A  European  can  find  nothing  to 


154      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

satisfy  the  hunger  of  his  heart.  The  air  is 
too  thin  to  breathe.  He  requires  haunted 
woods,  and  the  friendly  presence  of  ghosts. 
The  immaterial  soil  of  England  is  heavy  and 
fertile  with  the  decaying  stuff  of  past  seasons 
and  generations.  Here  is  the  floor  of  a  new 
wood,  yet  uncumbered  by  one  year's  autumn 
fall.  We  Europeans  find  the  Orient  stale 
and  get  too  luxuriantly  fetid  by  reason  of 
the  multitude  of  bygone  lives  and  thoughts, 
oppressive  with  the  crowded  presence  of  the 
dead,  both  men  and  gods.  So,  I  imagine,  a 
Canadian  would  feel  our  woods  and  fields 
heavy  with  the  past  and  the  invisible,  and 
suffer  claustrophobia  in  an  English  country 
side  beneath  the  dreadful  pressure  of  immortals. 
For  his  own  forests  and  wild  places  are  wind 
swept  and  empty.  That  is  their  charm,  and 
their  terror.  You  may  lie  awake  all  night 
and  never  feel  the  passing  of  evil  presences, 
nor  hear  printless  feet;  neither  do  you  lapse 
into  slumber  with  the  comfortable  conscious 
ness  of  those  friendly  watchers  who  sit  in 
visibly  by  a  lonely  sleeper  under  an  English 
sky.  Even  an  Irishman  would  not  see  a  row 
of  little  men  with  green  caps  lepping  along 
beneath  the  fire-weed  and  the  golden  daisies; 
nor  have  the  subtler  fairies  of  England  found 


THE  ROCKIES  155 

these  wilds.  It  has  never  paid  a  steamship 
or  railway  company  to  arrange  for  their 
emigration. 

In  the  bush  of  certain  islands  of  the  South 
Seas  you  may  hear  a  crashing  on  windless 
noons,  and,  looking  up,  see  a  corpse  swinging 
along  head  downwards  at  a  great  speed  from 
tree  to  tree,  holding  by  its  toes,  grimacing, 
dripping  with  decay.  Americans,  so  active 
in  this  life,  rest  quiet  afterwards.  And 
though  every  stone  of  Wall  Street  have  its 
separate  Lar,  their  kind  have  not  gone  out 
beyond  city-lots.  The  maple  and  the  birch 
conceal  no  dryads,  and  Pan  has  never  been 
heard  amongst  these  reed-beds.  Look  as  long 
as  you  like  upon  a  cataract  of  the  New  World, 
you  shall  not  see  a  white  arm  in  the  foam.  A 
godless  place.  And  the  dead  do  not  return. 
That  is  why  there  is  nothing  lurking  in  the 
heart  of  the  shadows,  and  no  human  mystery 
in  the  colours,  and  neither  the  same  joy  nor  the 
kind  of  peace  in  dawn  and  sunset  that  older 
lands  know.  It  is,  indeed,  a  new  world. 
How  far  away  seem  those  grassy,  moonlit 
places  in  England  that  have  been  Roman 
camps  or  roads,  where  there  is  always  serenity, 
and  the  spirit  of  a  purpose  at  rest,  and  the 
sunlight  flashes  upon  more  than  flint !  Here 


156      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

one  is  perpetually  a  first-comer.  The  land  is 
virginal,  the  wind  cleaner  than  elsewhere,  and 
every  lake  new-born,  and  each  day  is  the 
first  day.  The  flowers  are  less  conscious  than 
English  flowers,  the  breezes  have  nothing  to 
remember,  and  everything  to  promise.  There 
walk,  as  yet,  no  ghosts  of  lovers  in  Canadian 
lanes.  This  is  the  essence  of  the  grey  fresh 
ness  and  brisk  melancholy  of  this  land.  And 
for  all  the  charm  of  those  qualities,  it  is  also 
the  secret  of  a  European's  discontent.  For 
it  is  possible,  at  a  pinch,  to  do  without  gods. 
But  one  misses  the  dead. 


XIV 
SOME  NIGGERS 


XIV 
SOME  NIGGERS 

"Look  at  those  niggers  1  Whose  are  they  ?"  (An  American 
Suffragist  lady  on  board  s.s.  'Ventura,'  entering  Pago-Pago 
Harbour,  Samoa,  October  1913.  Apropos  of  the  Samoans.) 

I  SUPPOSE  that  if  news  came  that  the  National 
Gallery  was  burnt  down,  one  might  feel,  while 
hearing  of  the  general  damage,  the  rooms 
gutted  or  untouched,  the  Rembrandts  and 
Titians  saved,  harmed,  or  lost,  a  sudden  dis 
proportionately  keen  little  stab  of  wonder: 
"The  Pisanello  St  George"  or  "The  Patinir 
Flight  into  Egypt" — "What's  happened  to 
that?"  So  now  there  must  be  a  handful 
of  wanderers  here  and  there  who,  among 
all  the  major  conflagration  and  disasters  of 
nations  and  continents,  have  felt  the  tug  of 
the  question,  "What  of  Samoa?" 

The  South  Sea  Islands  have  an  invincible 
glamour.  Any  bar  in  'Frisco  or  Sydney  will 
give  you  tales  of  seamen  who  slipped  ashore 
in  Samoa  or  Tahiti  or  the  Marquesas  for  a 
month's  holiday,  five,  ten,  or  twenty  years  ago. 

159 


160      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

Their  wives  and  families  await  them  yet. 
They  are  compound,  these  islands,  of  all  legend 
ary  heavens.  They  are  Calypso's  and  Pros- 
pero's  isle,  and  the  Hesperides,  and  Paradise, 
and  every  timeless  and  untroubled  spot.  Such 
tales  have  been  made  of  them  by  men  who 
have  been  there,  and  gone  away,  and  have 
been  haunted  by  the  smell  of  the  bush  and 
the  lagoons,  and  faint  thunder  on  the  distant 
reef,  and  the  colours  of  sky  and  sea  and  coral, 
and  the  beauty  and  grace  of  the  islanders. 
And  the  queer  thing  is  that  it's  all,  almost 
tiresomely,  true.  In  the  South  Seas  the 
Creator  seems  to  have  laid  Himself  out  to 
show  what  He  can  do.  Imagine  an  island 
with  the  most  perfect  climate  in  the  world, 
tropical,  yet  almost  always  cooled  by  a  breeze 
from  the  sea.  No  malaria  or  other  fevers. 
No  dangerous  beasts,  snakes,  or  insects.  Fish 
for  the  catching,  and  fruits  for  the  pluck 
ing.  And  an  earth  and  sky  and  sea  of  im 
mortal  loveliness.  What  more  could  civilisa 
tion  give?  Umbrellas?  Rope?  Gladstone 
bags?  .  .  .  Any  one  of  the  vast  leaves  of 
the  banana  is  more  waterproof  than  the  most 
expensive  woven  stuff.  And  from  the  first 
tree  you  can  tear  off  a  long  strip  of  fibre  that 
holds  better  than  any  rope.  And  thirty 


SOME  NIGGERS  1G1 

seconds'  work  on  a  great  palm  leaf  produces 
a  basket-bag  which  will  carry  incredible 
weights  all  day,  and  can  be  thrown  away  in 
the  evening.  A  world  of  conveniences.  And 
the  things  which  civilisation  has  left  behind 
or  missed  by  the  way  are  there,  too,  among 
the  Polynesians:  beauty  and  courtesy  and 
mirth.  I  think  there  is  no  gift  of  mind  or 
body  that  the  wise  value  which  these  people 
lack.  A  man  I  met  in  some  other  islands, 
who  had  travelled  much  all  over  the  world, 
said  to  me,  "I  have  found  no  man,  in  or  out 
of  Europe,  with  the  good  manners  and  dignity 
of  the  Samoan,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
the  Irish  peasant."  A  people  among  whom 
an  Italian  would  be  uncouth,  and  a  high-caste 
Hindu  vulgar,  and  Karsavina  would  seem 
clumsy,  and  Helen  of  Troy  a  frump. 

The  white  population  of  Heaven,  as  one 
would  expect,  is  very  small;  but,  as  one 
wouldn't  expect,  it  is  composed  of  Americans, 
English,  and  Germans.  About  half  Germans, 
for  it  has  been  a  German  colony  for  some 
fourteen  years.  But  it  is  one  of  the  few  white 
'possessions,'  I  suppose,  where  a  decent  white 
needn't  feel  ashamed  of  himself.  For,  though 
it's  proper  to  deny  that  Germans  can  colonise, 
they  have  certainly  ruled  Samoa  very  well. 


162      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

In  some  part,  no  doubt,  the  luck  has  been 
with  them — with  the  world — in  this  success. 
Samoa  was  one  of  their  later  and  wiser  attempts 
in  colonising.  The  first  governor  was  Herr 
Solf,  the  present  Secretary  for  the  Colonies, 
who  is  reputed  to  have  started  the  administra 
tion  of  Samoa  after  a  careful  examination  of 
our  method  of  ruling  Fiji,  and  with  a  due,  but 
not  complete,  regard  for  the  advice  of  the 
chief  English  and  American  settlers  in  Samoa. 
Certainly  he  started  it  very  ably  and  wisely. 
By  luck  and  good  management  those  various 
forces  which  might  destroy  the  beauty  of 
Samoa  are  almost  ineffectual.  The  fact  that 
the  missionaries  are  nearly  all  English  puts  a 
slight  sufficient  chasm  between  the  spiritual 
and  civil  powers,  and  avoids  that  worst  peril 
of  these  places — hierocracy.  The  trade  of  the 
islands  is  largely  a  monopoly  of  the  "Ger 
man  firm,'  a  big  affair  which  pays  a  few 
people  in  Hamburg  fabulous  percentages.  So 
smaller  traders  aren't  encouraged  to  flourish 
unduly;  and  the  German  firm  itself  is  too  well 
fed  to  bother  about  extending.  The  Samoans, 
therefore,  aren't  exploited,  spiritually  or  com 
mercially,  as  much  as  they  might  be.  By  such 
slight  chances  beauty  keeps  a  foothold  in 
the  world.  The  missionary's  peace  of  mind 


SOME  NIGGERS  163 

may  require  that  the  Samoan  should  wear 
trousers,  or  the  trader's  pocket  that  he  should 
drink  gin  and  live  under  corrugated  iron. 
But  the  Government  has  discovered  that  these 
things  are  not  good  for  the  health  of  the  Poly 
nesian,  so  the  Samoan  wears  his  lava-lava  and 
drinks  his  Jcava,  and  lives  in  his  cool  and  lovely 
thatched  hut,  and  is  happy.  And — final  test 
of  administration — the  population  is  no  longer 
decreasing. 

But  I  think  there's  more  than  luck  or  German 
wisdom  at  the  bottom  of  the  happy  condition 
of  Samoa.  Something  in  the  very  magic  of 
the  place  seems  to  subdue  or  soften  the  evil 
in  men.  Heaven  forbid  I  should  deny  that 
mean  and  treacherous  and  cruel  acts  of  white 
men  and  brown  are  on  record.  But  as  a  rule 
the  greedy  or  the  boorish,  once  they  settle 
there,  appear  to  mellow  and  grow  quiet. 
Between  this  sea  and  sky  even  a  trader  be 
comes  almost  a  gentleman,  even  a  Prussian 
almost  lovable,  and  the  very  missionaries  are 
betrayed  by  beauty,  and  contentment  takes 
them  unaware. 

Samoa  has  been  well  governed.  The  people 
have  been  forbidden  a  few  perils  of  civilisation, 
and  for  the  rest  are  left  pretty  well  to  them 
selves.  Go  up  from  Apia  across  the  mountains, 


164      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

or  round  the  coast,  or  take  a  boat  over  to  the 
other  big  island,  Savaii,  and  you  find  them 
living  their  old  life,  fishing  and  bathing  and 
singing,  and  never  a  sign  of  a  white  man. 
They  are  guaranteed  possession  of  their 
land.  They'll  sometimes  complain  faintly  of 
'taxation' — a  small  head-tax  the  Government 
exacts,  which  compels  the  individual  to  some 
four  or  five  days'  work  a  year.  The  English 
inhabitants  themselves  have  had  no  grumble 
against  the  Germans  except  that  they  incline 
to  be  "too  kind  to  the  natives' — an  admirable 
testimonial.  And  traders  in  the  Pacific  say 
they  always  get  far  better  treatment  from 
the  customs  and  harbour  authorities  at  Apia 
than  at  the  British  Suva,  in  Fiji. 

And  yet  the  Samoans  do  not  like  the 
Germans.  When  I  was  there,  nearly  a  year 
ago,  I  was  often  asked,  "When  will  Peritania 
(Britain)  fight  Germany,  and  send  her  away 
from  Samoa?"  They  have  no  complaint 
against  the  Germans.  They  have  merely  a 
sentimental  and  highly  flattering  preference 
for  the  English.  On  a  recent  visit  of  an 
English  gunboat  to  Apia,  the  officers  were 
entertained  at  a  Samoan  dinner  party,  with 
music  and  dances,  by  an  eminent  and  very 
charming  young  princess.  The  princess  is  a 


SOME  NIGGERS  165 

famous  beauty,  with  the  keen  intelligence 
Samoans  have  if  they  care,  a  wonderful 
dancer,  possessed  of  a  glorious  singing  voice 
and  a  perfect  knowledge  of  English.  The 
party  was  a  great  success.  The  princess  led 
her  guests  afterwards  to  the  flag-staff.  Before 
anyone  could  stop  her,  she  leapt  on  to  the 
pole  and  raced  up  the  sixty  feet  of  it.  That 
also  is  among  the  accomplishments  of  a 
Samoan  princess.  She  seized  the  German 
flag,  tore  it  to  pieces,  brought  it  down,  and 
danced  on  it.  So  the  tale  is;  and  it  is  prob 
ably  true.  In  the  villages  where  I  stayed 
it  was  amusing  how  swiftly  and  completely 
the  children  forgot  the  few  words  of  German 
the  Government  sometimes  had  them  taught; 
while  one  or  two  common  phrases,  'M  or  gen,' 
'gut,'  etc.,  were  retained  as  extremely  good 
jokes  by  the  boys  and  girls,  occasions  of  in 
extinguishable  laughter,  through  the  absurdity 
of  their  sound  and  the  very  ridiculous  German- 
ness  of  them.  .  .  . 

I  wish  I  were  there  again.  It  is  a  country, 
and  a  life,  that  bind  the  heart.  There  is  a 
poem: 

"I  know  an  island, 

Lovely  and  lost,  and  half  the  world  away; 
And  there,  'twixt  lowland  and  highland, 


166      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

Lies  a  pool,  rich  with  murmur  and  scent  and  glimmer, 

And  there  my  friends  go  all  the  radiant  day, 

Each  golden-limbed  and  flower-crowned  laughing  swimmer," 

— and  so  on.  It  tells  how  ugly  and  joyless  by 
comparison  the  fellow's  own  country  some 
times  seems,  filled  with  money-making  and 
fogs  and  such  grey  things: 

"Evil  and  gloom,  and  cold  o*  nights  in  my  land; 
But, — I  know  an  island 
Where  Beauty  and  Courtesy,  as  flowers,  blow." 

So  it  goes,  with  a  jolly  return  on  the  rhyme. 
But  the  whole  poem  is  a  bad  one.  Still,  the 
man  felt  it,  the  magic.  It  is  a  magic  of  a 
different  way  of  life.  In  the  South  Seas,  if 
you  live  the  South  Sea  life,  the  intellect  soon 
lapses  into  quiescence.  The  body  becomes 
more  active,  the  senses  and  perceptions  more 
lordly  and  acute.  It  is  a  life  of  swimming 
and  climbing  and  resting  after  exertion.  The 
skin  seems  to  grow  more  sensitive  to  light 
and  air,  and  the  feel  of  water  and  the  earth 
and  leaves.  Hour  after  hour  one  may  float 
in  the  warm  lagoons,  conscious,  in  the  whole 
body,  of  every  shred  and  current  of  the  multi 
tudinous  water,  or  diving  under  in  a  vain 
attempt  to  catch  the  radiant  butterfly-coloured 
fish  that  flit  in  and  out  of  the  thousand  windows 


SOME  NIGGERS  167 

of  their  gorgeous  coral  palaces.  Or  go  up, 
one  of  a  singing  flower-garlanded  crowd,  to  a 
shaded  pool  of  a  river  in  the  bush,  cool  from 
the  mountains.  The  blossom-hung  darkness 
is  streaked  with  the  bodies  that  fling  them 
selves,  head  or  feet  first,  from  the  cliffs  around 
the  water,  and  the  haunted  forest-silence  is 
broken  by  laughter.  It  is  part  of  the  charm 
of  these  people  that,  while  they  are  not  so 
foolish  as  to  c  think,'  their  intelligence  is 
incredibly  lively  and  subtle,  their  sense  of 
humour  and  their  intuitions  of  other  people's 
feelings  are  very  keen  and  living.  They  have 
built  up,  in  the  long  centuries  of  their  civilisa 
tion,  a  delicate  and  noble  complexity  of  be 
haviour  and  of  personal  relationships.  A 
white  man  living  with  them  soon  feels  his 
mind  as  deplorably  dull  as  his  skin  is  pale  and 
unhealthy  among  those  glorious  golden-brown 
bodies.  But  even  he  soon  learns  to  be  his 
body  (and  so  his  true  mind),  instead  of  using 
it  as  a  stupid  convenience  for  his  personality, 
a  moment's  umbrella  against  this  world.  He 
is  perpetually  and  intensely  aware  of  the 
subtleties  of  taste  in  food,  of  every  tint  and 
line  of  the  incomparable  glories  of  those 
dawns  and  evenings,  of  each  shade  of  inter 
course  in  fishing  or  swimming  or  dancing  with 


168      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

the  best  companions  in  the  world.  That 
alone  is  life;  all  else  is  death.  And  after 
dark,  the  black  palms  against  a  tropic  night, 
the  smell  of  the  wind,  the  tangible  moonlight 
like  a  white,  dry,  translucent  mist,  the  lights 
in  the  huts,  the  murmur  and  laughter  of 
passing  figures,  the  passionate,  queer  thrill  of 
the  rhythm  of  some  hidden  dance — all  this 
will  seem  to  him,  inexplicably  and  almost 
unbearably,  a  scene  his  heart  has  known  long 
ago,  and  forgotten,  and  yet  always  looked  for. 
And  now  Samoa  is  ours.  A  New  Zealand 
Expeditionary  Force  took  it.  Well,  I  know 
a  princess  who  will  have  had  the  day  of  her 
life.  Did  they  see  Stevenson's  tomb  gleaming 
high  up  on  the  hill,  as  they  made  for  that 
passage  in  the  reef?  Did  Vasa,  with  his 
heavy-lidded  eyes,  and  that  infinitely  adorable 
lady  Fafaia,  wander  down  to  the  beach  to 
watch  them  land?  They  must  have  landed 
from  boats;  and  at  noon,  I  see.  How  hot 
they  got!  I  know  that  Apia  noon.  Didn't 
they  rush  to  the  Tivoli  bar — but  I  forget, 
New  Zealanders  are  teetotalers.  So,  perhaps, 
the  Samoans  gave  them  the  coolest  of  all 
drinks,  Jcava;  and  they  scored.  And  what 
dances  in  their  honour,  that  night ! — but, 
again,  I'm  afraid  the  houla-houla  would  shock 


SOME  NIGGERS  169 

a  New  Zealander.  I  suppose  they  left  a 
garrison,  and  went  away.  I  can  very  vividly 
see  them  steaming  out  in  the  evening;  and 
the  crowd  on  shore  would  be  singing  them  that 
sweetest  and  best-known  of  South  Sea  songs, 
which  begins  'Good-bye,  my  Flenni'  ('Friend,' 
you'd  pronounce  it),  and  goes  on  in  Samoan, 
a  very  beautiful  tongue.  I  hope  they'll  rule 
Samoa  well. 


XV 
AN  UNUSUAL  YOUNG  MAN 


XV 
AN  UNUSUAL  YOUNG  MAN 

SOME  say  the  Declaration  of  War  threw  us 
into  a  primitive  abyss  of  hatred  and  the  lust 
for  blood.  Others  declare  that  we  behaved 
very  well.  I  do  not  know.  I  only  know  the 
thoughts  that  flowed  through  the  mind  of  a 
friend  of  mine  when  he  heard  the  news.  My 
friend — I  shall  make  no  endeavour  to  excuse 
him — is  a  normal,  even  ordinary  man,  wholly 
English,  twenty-four  years  old,  active  and 
given  to  music.  By  a  chance  he  was  ignorant 
of  the  events  of  the  world  during  the  last 
days  of  July.  He  was  camping  with  some 
friends  in  a  remote  part  of  Cornwall,  and  had 
gone  on,  with  a  companion,  for  a  four-days' 
sail.  So  it  wasn't  till  they  beached  her  again 
that  they  heard.  A  youth  ran  down  to  them 
with  a  telegram:  "We're  at  war  with  Germany. 
We've  joined  France  and  Russia." 

My  friend  ate  and  drank,  and  then  climbed 
a  hill  of  gorse,  and  sat  alone,  looking  at  the 
sea.  His  mind  was  full  of  confused  images, 

173 


174      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

and  the  sense  of  strain.  In  answer  to  the 
word  *  Germany/  a  train  of  vague  thoughts 
dragged  across  his  brain.  The  pompous 
middle-class  vulgarity  of  the  building  of  Berlin; 
the  wide  and  restful  beauty  of  Munich;  the 
taste  of  beer;  innumerable  quiet,  glittering 
cafes \  the  Ring;  the  swish  of  evening  air 
in  the  face,  as  one  skis  down  past  the  pines; 
a  certain  angle  of  the  eyes  in  the  face;  long 
nights  of  drinking,  and  singing,  and  laughter; 
the  admirable  beauty  of  German  wives  and 
mothers;  certain  friends;  some  tunes;  the 
quiet  length  of  evening  over  the  Starnberger- 
See.  Between  him  and  the  Cornish  sea  he 
saw  quite  clearly  an  April  morning  on  a  lake 
south  of  Berlin,  the  grey  water  slipping  past 
his  little  boat,  and  a  peasant-woman,  sud 
denly  revealed  against  apple-blossom,  hang 
ing  up  blue  and  scarlet  garments  to  dry  in 
the  sun.  Children  played  about  her;  and  she 
sang  as  she  worked.  And  he  remembered  a 
night  in  Munich  spent  with  a  students'  Kneipe. 
From  eight  to  one  they  had  continually 
emptied  immense  jugs  of  beer,  and  smoked, 
and  sung  English  and  German  songs  in  pro 
found  chorus.  And  when  the  party  broke 
up  he  found  himself  arm-in-arm  with  the 
president,  who  was  a  vast  Jew,  and  with  an 


AN  UNUSUAL  YOUNG  MAN     175 

Apollonian  youth  called  Leo  Diringer,  who 
said  he  was  a  poet.  There  was  also  a  fourth 
man,  of  whom  he  could  remember  no  detail. 
Together,  walking  with  ferocious  care  down 
the  middle  of  the  street,  they  had  swayed 
through  Schwabing  seeking  an  open  cafe. 
Cafe  Benz  was  closed,  but  further  up  there 
was  a  little  place  still  lighted,  inhabited  by 
one  waiter,  innumerable  chairs  and  tables 
piled  on  each  other  for  the  night,  and  a  row 
of  chess-boards,  in  front  of  which  sat  a  little 
bald,  bearded  man  in  dress  clothes,  waiting. 
The  little  man  seemed  to  them  infinitely 
pathetic.  Four  against  one,  they  played  him 
at  chess,  and  were  beaten.  They  bowed, 
and  passed  into  the  night.  Leo  Diringer 
recited  a  sonnet,  and  slept  suddenly  at  the 
foot  of  a  lamp-post.  The  Jew's  heavy-lidded 
eyes  shone  with  a  final  flicker  of  caution,  and 
he  turned  homeward  resolutely,  to  the  last 
not  wholly  drunk.  My  friend  had  wandered 
to  his  lodgings,  in  an  infinite  peace.  He  could 
not  remember  what  had  happened  to  the 
fourth  man.  .  .  . 

A  thousand  little  figures  tumbled  through 
his  mind.  But  they  no  longer  brought  with 
them  that  air  of  comfortable  kindliness  which 
Germany  had  always  signified  for  him.  Some- 


176      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

thing  in  him  kept  urging,  "You  must  hate 
these  things,  find  evil  in  them."  There  was 
that  half -conscious  agony  of  breaking  a  mental 
habit,  painting  out  a  mass  of  associations, 
which  he  had  felt  in  ceasing  to  believe  in  a 
religion,  or,  more  acutely,  after  quarrelling 
with  a  friend.  He  knew  that  was  absurd. 
The  picture  came  to  him  of  encountering  the 
Jew,  or  Diringer,  or  old  Wolf,  or  little  Streck- 
mann,  the  pianist,  in  a  raid  on  the  East  Coast, 
or  on  the  Continent,  slashing  at  them  in  a 
stagey,  dimly-imagined  battle.  Ridiculous. 
He  vaguely  imagined  a  series  of  heroic  feats, 
vast  enterprise,  and  the  applause  of  crowds.  .  . . 
From  that  egotism  he  was  awakened  to  a 
different  one,  by  the  thought  that  this  day 
meant  war  and  the  change  of  all  things  he 
knew.  He  realised,  with  increasing  resent 
ment,  that  music  would  be  neglected.  And 
he  wouldn't  be  able,  for  example,  to  camp  out. 
He  might  have  to  volunteer  for  military 
training  and  service.  Some  of  his  friends 
would  be  killed.  The  Russian  ballet  wouldn't 

return.     His  own  relationship  with  A ,  a 

girl  he  intermittently  adored,  would  be 
changed.  Absurd,  but  inevitable;  because 
— he  scarcely  worded  it  to  himself — he  and  she 
and  everyone  else  were  going  to  be  different. 


AN  UNUSUAL  YOUNG  MAN     177 

His  mind  fluttered  irascibly  to  escape  from 
this  thought,  but  still  came  back  to  it,  like  a 
tethered  bird.  Then  he  became  calmer,  and 
wandered  out  for  a  time  into  fantasy. 

A  cloud  over  the  sun  woke  him  to  conscious 
ness  of  his  own  thoughts;  and  he  found,  with 
perplexity,  that  they  were  continually  recur 
ring  to  two  periods  of  his  life,  the  days  after 
the  death  of  his  mother,  and  the  time  of  his 
first  deep  estrangement  from  one  he  loved. 
After  a  bit  he  understood  this.  Now,  as 
then,  his  mind  had  been  completely  divided 
into  two  parts:  the  upper  running  about 
aimlessly  from  one  half-relevant  thought  to 
another,  the  lower  unconscious  half  labouring 
with  some  profound  and  unknowable  change. 
This  feeling  of  ignorant  helplessness  linked 
him  with  those  past  crises.  His  consciousness 
was  like  the  light  scurry  of  waves  at  full  tide, 
when  the  deeper  waters  are  pausing  and 
gathering  and  turning  home.  Something  was 
growing  in  his  heart,  and  he  couldn't  tell 
what.  But  as  he  thought  'England  and 
Germany,'  the  word  'England'  seemed  to 
flash  like  a  line  of  foam.  With  a  sudden 
tightening  of  his  heart,  he  realised  that  there 
might  be  a  raid  on  the  English  coast.  He 
didn't  imagine  any  possibility  of  it  succeeding, 


178      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

but  only  of  enemies  and  warfare  on  English 
soil.  The  idea  sickened  him.  He  was  im 
mensely  surprised  to  perceive  that  the  actual 
earth  of  England  held  for  him  a  quality  which 

he  found  in  A ,  and  in  a  friend's  honour, 

and  scarcely  anywhere  else,  a  quality  which, 
if  he'd  ever  been  sentimental  enough  to  use 
the  word,  he'd  have  called  'holiness.'  His 
astonishment  grew  as  the  full  flood  of 
'England'  swept  him  on  from  thought  to 
thought.  He  felt  the  triumphant  helplessness 
of  a  lover.  Grey,  uneven  little  fields,  and 
small,  ancient  hedges  rushed  before  him,  wild 
flowers,  elms  and  beeches,  gentleness,  sedate 
houses  of  red  brick,  proudly  unassuming,  a 
countryside  of  rambling  hills  and  friendly 
copses.  He  seemed  to  be  raised  high,  looking 
down  on  a  landscape  compounded  of  the 
western  view  from  the  Cotswolds,  and  the 
Weald,  and  the  high  land  in  Wiltshire,  and 
the  Midlands  seen  from  the  hills  above  Prince's 
Risborough.  And  all  this  to  the  accompani 
ment  of  tunes  heard  long  ago,  an  intolerable 
number  of  them  being  hymns.  There  was, 
in  his  mind,  a  confused  multitude  of  faces, 
to  most  of  which  he  could  not  put  a  name. 
At  one  moment  he  was  on  an  Atlantic  liner, 
sick  for  home,  making  Plymouth  at  nightfall; 


AN  UNUSUAL  YOUNG  MAN     179 

and  at  another,  diving  into  a  little  rocky  pool 
through  which  the  Teign  flows,  north  of  Bovey; 
and  again,  waking,  stiff  with  dew,  to  see  the 
dawn  come  up  over  the  Royston  plain.  And 
continually  he  seemed  to  see  the  set  of  a 
mouth  which  he  knew  for  his  mother's,  and 

A 's  face,  and,  inexplicably,  the  face  of  an 

old  man  he  had  once  passed  in  a  Warwick 
shire  village.  To  his  great  disgust,  the  most 
commonplace  sentiments  found  utterance  in 
him.  At  the  same  time  he  was  extraordinarily 
happy.  .  .  . 

My  friend,  who  has  always,  though  never 
very  passionately,  believed  himself  a  most 
unusual  young  man,  rose  to  his  feet.  Feeling 
a  little  frightened,  and  more  than  a  little 
unwell — for  he  is  a  person  of  quiet  mental 
habits — he  wandered  down  the  hill.  He  kept 
slowly  moving  his  head,  like  a  man  who  wishes 
to  dodge  a  pain.  I  gather  that  he  was 
conscious  of  few  definite  thoughts  till  he 
reached  the  London  train.  He  kept  remem 
bering,  unwillingly,  a  midnight  in  Carnival- 
time  in  Munich,  when  he  had  seen  a  clown, 
a  Pierrot,  and  a  Columbine  tip-toe  deli 
cately  round  the  deserted  corner  of  Theresien- 
strasse,  and  vanish  into  the  darkness.  Then 
he  thought  of  the  lights  on  the  pavement  in 


180      LETTERS  FROM  AMERICA 

Trafalgar  Square.  It  seemed  to  him  the 
most  desirable  thing  in  the  world  to  mingle 
and  talk  with  a  great  many  English  people. 
Also,  he  kept  saying  to  himself — for  he  felt 
vaguely  jealous  of  the  young  men  in  Germany 
and  France — "Well,  if  Armageddon's  on,  I 
suppose  one  should  be  there."  ...  Of  France, 
he  tells  me,  he  thought  little.  The  French 
always  seemed  to  him  people  to  be  respected, 
but  very  remote;  more  incomprehensible  than 
the  Japanese,  more,  even,  than  the  Irish.  Of 
Russia,  less.  She  meant  nothing  to  him 
except  a  sense  of  hysteria  and  vague  evil 
which  he  had  been  given  by  some  of  her 
music  and  literature.  He  thought  often  and 
heavily  of  Germany.  Of  England,  all  the 
time.  He  didn't  know  whether  he  was  glad 
or  sad.  It  was  a  new  feeling. 


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